Make something of Yourself: The audacious Days of Blake Bart
by S1lverhair
Summary: The Transcript. T. Swearing, Comic Violence, Shenanigans. From the slums of brockton bay comes a little guy with big dreams, he's gonna take the world by storm and earn his place with a white picket fence two and a half kids and a dog. Then he gets superpowers and a Burning need to Blaze Bright or Die Tryin'. Who knows? One day he might make something of himself.
1. Foreword and Intro

Hello Silverhair here This is "Make Somthing of yourself: the Audacious Days of Blake Bart" a transcript of a rather silly quest played on Spacebattles dot Com.

A silly little thing I've been doing for a while now where I take a original Charachter created by Jurric (of spacebattles) and let YOU, the Audience choose the path he takes in life and precisely what kinds of shenannigans he get's up to in the perpetually rolling apocalyptic clusterfuck which is the wormverse.

Remember the wormversse is a very serious place, super serious. I would even go so far as to call it super duper serious, but if you feel that propping a nudifier in a big cluster of ill mannered nazis at a dogfight is the kind of shenannigans you might enjoy this just might be for you.

What follows is the original opening from Jurric's Quest.

my work starts in chapter 1.

FF ate my formatting.

* * *

Your life was easy enough, for the first few years. Your mother made an effort, for a while, to stay clean. Then she went to meet your father one day, and when she came back...

She died of an overdose three years later, but by then, you were already hooked. It didn't matter that smoking anything triggered your asthma, didn't matter that your heart was weak. Didn't matter that your growth was stunted. What mattered was your next hit, and with your father running almost all the drug trade in town, that wasn't hard to come by.

You'd never been close to your father. He knocked your mother up when they were both teenagers, then left her. When she died he took you in and mostly ignored you. He had a girlfriend, and a gang to run. He either didn't notice you taking money and product, or noticed and didn't care.

And then, for your 15th birthday a bunch of your fathers friends held a 'party' which somehow, you still aren't exactly sure how, ended up with you bleeding out in an ally from a stab wound in your belly.

You knew you were going to die when the ambulance officers picked you up, and left most of your guts on the ground. You knew. It was written.

An angel saved you. A young, freckled angel with curly brown hair.

It was defining. It was freeing. She gave you a chance. And you took it.

Your body was better, you would always be small, but your growth wasn't stunted any more, your heart wasn't weak, your asthma was gone. Your mind was untouched, and you could only thank Scion that stewing your poor brain in a cocktail of chemicals had yet to do any real damage.

You'd kept a little of the money. Enough to bribe a doctor to let you stay in the hospital as the withdrawals hit. That wasn't the hard part. The hard part was going home afterwards.

A recovering addict, staying in Skidmark's base. The centre of Merchant territory. Surrounded by temptation and pressure. You don't know how you made it.

Study helped. Addiction was channelled to obsession, and over the next two years you went from an F average student who could barely read to a B average. Which you thought was rather good considering your home environment was... not conducive to study.

Exercise helped to. Until that bitch Sophia got you kicked of the track team and damn near expelled you were having a fair amount of success as runner. Now you'd turned your attention to martial arts. You're instructor called your style "An undisciplined mess with no solid footwork and a complete disregard for your own safety. It's only possible merit is unpredictability." You think this means that you're making progress. That was a much better assessment than a month ago.

Your home life is becoming difficult. You're already sneered at for "thinking he's above us" and with your recent decision to stop swearing your father has started to give you odd looks. You had plans to move out when you turned 18, but you may have to move those up...

You get by with the simple expedience of staying quiet, and staying out of everyone's way.

Your time is no longer spent in a stupor, it is carefully organised around school, exercise, study, and your volunteer work for a large catering company. The catering company was going to give you a nice reference, but that wasn't the real reason you spent so much precious time with them. You'd managed to pinch enough money from your father over the last few years for college. The fact that you're fairly sure your fathers head would explode if he knew his son was waiting tables in a suit every evening was a nice fringe benefit, but that wasn't the reason either.

The reason was Panacea. You may have had something of a... crush. To the point where you had to try really hard not to do the whole stalker thing. Considering you had been volunteering as waiter for two months just to attend a party New Wave had been invited to... yeah, you were probably failing.

The party itself was boring. A fund-raiser for something or another, you helped set-up the tables, and then walked around with a trays of snacks and wine glasses while the event was taking place.

Panacea made a late entry with her sister, and you resisted the effects of the aura to look at the girl who saved your life. She wasn't pretty, she looked tired. She look sullen. She tried to hide behind her sister. She was the most gorgeous thing you had ever seen.

The rational part of your mind thought about just where you would be without her, and agreed with the part of you that wanted to found a cult in her name. Panacea herself was human, you knew that, but the idea! The idea that you had someone to strive to prove yourself to, the idea that you simply couldn't go back home and get as high as your father, that was what kept you going. Proving to her that her time healing you hadn't been wasted. That turning up at another hospital, and healing someone else wouldn't have been as good for humanity. That was what drove you to better yourself.

You spent most of the party watching Panacea, trying not to be obvious about it and trying not to bump into anyone with a full tray. It wasn't like you were the only one gawking. Panacea stuck close to her sister, and everyone was looking at Glory Girl.

Panacea left early, and you tidied up the plates, helped with the dishes, the swept the floor, all while trying to subtly find out if this catering company was going to be hired again, or if you should start looking for another place to volunteer. It had been well worth it.

Going home was like leaving a palace and crawling into a pigsty. Changing into old clothes outside the catering company's restaurant and heading into the bad parts of town was easy enough. Finding the warehouse your father was staying at was also easy. But going in...

The door was blocked by two Merchants. They yelled a ridicule and parted to let you in. You stopped in the doorway. Your father was... recruiting.

"So, you couldn't fucking pay huh." He was stalking, an effect undermined by the shaking visible in his limbs, and trying to intimidate the girl on the ground. She looked in her early twenties, and she was eyeing the syringe your father was twirling and licking her lips. Probably a college graduate, maybe drop-out. Hooked, but not for long enough to be ruined.

"You want the good shit?" He put the syringe on the ground. "Crawl for it. Bitch."

It wasn't like this was an uncommon sight. Not really, but after seeing Panacea? Seeing what she went through to help people? Your common sense snapped.

The two Merchants on either side of you were Jim and Mitch, no last names. They were a pair of eyes and fairly tough hands. They weren't fighters unless they were high. You slammed your foot into Mitch's instep, linked your hands and swung your elbow into his chin. Then swung your hands back the other way, into Jim's stomach. When he doubled over you turned on him, and jerked your knee into his face with enough force to break his nose.

"What the fuck you doing kid?" Skidmark asked you. You ignored him as you walked forwards.

You keep walking until your up in his face. Glaring at him as you break the syringe under your boot.

"Leave. The only thing you're going to get here is pregnant or diseased." You say. Your father blinks, uncomprehending for a few seconds before he realises you're talking to the girl.

She gets up, hovers hesitantly for a second before wisely deciding to run. She should be fine. You seriously doubt your father has the resources or attention span to track her down. Especially if she's smart enough to go to the police.

"Are you fucked in the head or something boy."

No. Just sick of this. Sick of your father lording what little power he has. Sick of squalor. Sick of filth. Sick of wasted potential. Sick of the mental illness that was Skidmark.

"Fuck you. I take you in. I provide for you. Is this," he gestures, and you start sliding back as one of his fields pushes you towards the wall, "how you fucking repay me?"

Skidmark walked towards you, unaffected by his own field. He could chose if it affected him or not. If he concentrated, or if he wasn't to high. Unfortunately. Today was a good day for him.

The field is darker now. Effectively pinning you to the wall with several times the force of gravity. You can do nothing as the beating starts. You've been beaten before, but this feels worse, somehow. Not the pain, just the... uselessness. Your father wasn't going to change, no matter how hard you work, the stigma of being Skidmark's son would follow you for only as long as it took change your name, but it would always be a threat. A dirty secret your employers would not know.

Perhaps it's the contrast. The way you went from a charity ball attended by people who might actually be trying to make the city better, to here. As you feel a rib break, you lose concentration for a second. You saw something. Stars? Something to do with stars. And dancing? Nope, it's gone.

Huh, rib is going to take ages to heal, and you're a bit worried about a sort of... knot that you can sort of feel in your head.

Four days later, you climb out of bed and stretch. First time you can do that without pain. Must not have been as bad as you thought. You've stopped peeing blood to, which is nice. You'll give it another day, and if you're still feeling this good, you'll go back to working out. Even that knot you've been feeling in your head sort of feels much smaller now.

A week and a half later you put down your weights and start to think. You had powers. It should have been obvious from how quickly you healed, now though... you were superhumanly strong, preposterously strong, unbelievably strong. You heft a halfbrick in your hands, simple red ceramic surfaces with a bit if waste cement crusted to the side. You begin to squeeze, fingers simply going taunt around the surface. ninety seconds later the brick explodes into a cloud of red dust. you work the bag in the corner of the room a bit to no noticeable effect but when you grip the edges of a tin cup between your fingers you leave fingerprints in the metal in less than a minute... yep. Powers. It had to have something to do with that little knot in your head. A sort of... ball of energy that started growing when you mentally prodded it. Were you thinking about getting physically stronger when you prodded it last time. Probably. You'd been a bit worried when it started growing again, but it felt tiny now. Small. It had the strangest sensation of... waiting.

You prod it again, thinking that you needed to know more about this power. This would require careful study and lots of experimentation... or maybe not, maybe you could get information from it? There's a sort of... resistance, and then something slots into place and the knot becomes solid. You can't work with it any-more.

Its 13 days later when you wake up, and immediately realise you have a thinker power. A thinker power that lets you understand your original power, and the powers it has given you.

You're a trump. You can create minor powers, and give them to yourself. That was so cool. Lets see, so far you have a regeneration power. Not really fast, proportionally to how badly yu are injured, most vital parts first. Visible wounds don't close noticeably or anything but it will heal vital damage fast enough to prevent death in most cases. You also have a strength power. whenever you contract a muscle the force increases slowly until you relax your muscles. Could lift a car, only slowly though and your strength would reset every time you shift your grip, and even then you wouldn't be able to throw it but god help anyone you could manage to grapple. And you had a thinker ability, which let you understand your power the powers that it gave you, didn't cover any other powers though.

Ok, turning the thinker ability on your original power... original power allowed creation of only minor powers, stuff that would probably rank 1 - 3 on the PRT's ratings system, depending on how it was used. You could have an unlimited number, but powers couldn't be developed more than once, and you couldn't upgrade them... no. You could upgrade any power once. You just needed a lot off... thinker ability shorting out, you'll get back to that.

Well, there was something to be said for diversity, probably never going to make the big leagues if you couldn't create any power with a higher rating than 3 but... or could you.

You couldn't develop powers more than once, but you could develop powers with synergy. combine Sensory Hyper-Awareness with Automatic Deduction and you could analyze anything at a glance as if you had spent half an hour going over the details. or combine an injur transfer power with your healing to maximize speed.

Powers that were less broad could be stronger, situational, thematic or involuntary limitations could be used to increase the strength. You could make your skin fairly tough, tough enough that only a fairly determined knife stroke would get through it, or you could make your self completely invulnerable to everything, on the same level as Alexandria for half a second after ten seconds of focus.

Could you sort of... work that invulnerability to be at will? Yes. Sort of. You could make a multitasking ability which always focuses on activating the power, but then you'd still have a cooldown before you can reactivate it.

Could you improve your original power? No. That bit of resistance when creating your thinker ability was because you couldn't create trump powers at all. Blast.

You could create powers by inputting a concept. If you put a lot of detail into a power concept it could slightly increase the amount of time it took to create a power.

You take a minute to use your thinker ability to go through and see what sort of options you had. The options seemed fairly limitless, but hopefully you could sort of... gauge where to go from here by getting examples.

Ok, Mover. The concept of flight would let you sort of slowly float around a foot or so away from a solid surface. The concept of teleporting would let you travel a few meters in any direction once a minute. The concept of speed would let you move at four times your current speed in very short bursts.

Shaker, you could turn everything blue within eyesight of you green, or make the ground within a few metres of you slippery. Or give yourself some very weak telekinesis, as in concentrate to move pebbles weak.

Brute you'd sort of already played with, with the strength. That was about as much as you could manage without stacking powers.

Breaker, you could become a gentle mist for three seconds every hour, or an invulnerable statue for four seconds every day.

Master, you could make yourself seem a bit more personable. Or make people sneeze whenever you touched them. Or even bake birds flock to you when you sing.

Tinker, giving yourself an efficiency specialisation, like Armsmaster, would make it very weak. Tricky to improve a radio weak. But giving yourself a very narrow focus, like rocket boots would work, and if you did chose a broader speciality, then it would help with the other stuff a bit.

Blaster, you could maybe get a kinetic blast with a long recharge that was strong enough to knock someone over, or a rapid fire ability that was basically just colourful bursts of light.

Thinker, you could go precog, and see a second or two into the future. Or get a weak danger sense, or get a long term pre-cog ability that was incredibly vague and often wrong. Or some sort of weakness analysis maybe.

Ohhh, wait that was interesting. You could make yourself an ability that sent your memories a day back in time at the event of your death, so long as you permanently burned away two other random powers as you died. Very useful in a town like Brockton Bay, especially if you started getting into cape fights. At the moment you only had one life, and all it would take is one bit of bad luck to end your story before it really begins.

Hmm, you still had striker, changer and stranger to go, but you're thinker ability is starting to give you a headache, and you think you have the pattern down. You can create any power, but it has to be weak, the only way to get into the big leagues was a bunch of powers on long cool-downs, or stacking similar powers together. Or was it.

Could you give yourself Perfect Aim? Yes, once per day… not enough. You already knew that you could manage precog for a moment. Can you manage seeing the immediate consequences of your actions? Yes… Sweet. If you combine them could you manage to use that to get Perfect Aim. Power says yes but expresses it's doubts as a lance of pain bursts through your skull.

The pain doesn't matter, this is awesome. You just need to find ways to create minor powers with a lot of synergy, develop a plan, and then build those powers up. OK, just need a little bit of creativity... or you could cheat. Another thinker ability, that would let you be creative about power creation, maybe with a precog component? Something that will tell you what powers you need. A burst of agony shoots through your skull, that won't work.

Over the next three days you use your 'know your own power' thinker ability to figure out how to speed up the power building process. The simple answer is audacity. You get a small amount of power build-up each day simply by antagonizing people, with a moderate amount more if you do something risky, brave or foolish. Even a trolling on the internet or being offensively glib at school was worth a bit, though actions with a noticeable amount of risk in any form get you far more than something minor. According to your thinker ability a life or death fight with a parahuman would be the best way to build your powers really quickly, if you are the initiator you get even more and making them hate you is a veritable gold mine... But you probably aren't ready for that yet. You could also save... buildup, you're calling it buildup for now, until you think of something better.

You can save buildup and use it when you think of a power you really want. When you have enough you can also use it to improve one power once, at the additional cost of spending two days with a crippling headache. The power might lose a restriction or two, increase in range or effectiveness, you didn't have control over how it would improve, like you had control over the until power creation process.

You now have three powers. The regen, strength, the thinker ability that's really pulled it's weight, even if it's kinda useless now that you know how your power works.

It is midday, Sunday the 27st of February.

Ziz hit Canberra three days ago.

What Do?

Name: Blake Bart

Gender: Male

Build: Short and Wiry

 **Primary Power:**

Audacious Collector.

Collects minor powers. Powers cost 100 Buildup (Bu). Power upgrades cost 250 Bu. Powers cannot directly interact with other powers. Thrives off deliberate planned chaos, collecting buildup. Current Bu: 0 Pts. Hall of Fame. Secret Life of Aggressive Respectability (100Bu) Brazen Disregard for Parental Authority (250 Bu, Trigger)

 **Secondary Powers:**

Escalating strength:

Increases the strength of any muscle element and attendant structure (bones, skin etc) by 10% of base per second while contracted. resets element of muscle once it relaxes. does not impose fatigue as a result of extended contraction.

Vital Regeneration:

Regeneration enhanced proportional to the severity of damage. Regeneration conducts triage, putting immediate survival first. Enough to reseal a ruptured artery in ~5 sec, slowly repair brain damage and reassemble the heart quickly enough for very quick first aid to save you. will not repair scratches, dermal bruising and other "Flesh Wounds" noticeably faster than normal. Functions as long as your tissues are perfused with oxygenated blood, largest active part will be the site of primary reconstitution, active brain matter takes precedence.

Personal Power Analysis

Describes limits and abilities of all current powers as well as considered potential powers. Analyses combinations and synergies automatically. gives silly names and advice about powers.


	2. 101 The Usual Suspects

[X] Look for assholes at school you can antagonize without feeling guilty. (Bullies)  
-[X] listen around school for info.  
[X] Do martial defense classes.

* * *

It's a shitty sunday afternoon and for the most part things are as normal, Dad, is cursing up a storm, being king of the most run down castle in the city. Your superpowers are a pleasant change though, they won't help you in a fight as they are especially with the amount of people the gangs usually run with, but they're a start. You haven't decided on what particular power you want next and but you resolve to give it a good bit of thought as you pick up your training stuff on the way out the door to the dojo.

Monday.

You walk through the gates of Winslow, given some perspective it isn't exactly the greatest of schools, barely adequate is the usual term if you're feeling generous. Nonetheless it's a damn side better than hanging around with your old man, with your new strength you would find it hard enough to resist throttling the man who named himself after the least appealing aspect of unwashed undies.

The halls as usual are filled with the usual crop of teenagers. you pass a small clique of Nazis giving them a cheerful smile as you pass, one of the more aware ones gives you a glare which promises pain so you give him a salute as you go past, a single Bu ticking over. The Nazis here are mostly led by the children of a few of the hardcore believers, they tend to stay inside the building with their cliques while the True Believer recruits roam about in small groups causing trouble. At the far end of the hall there's a bunch of Asians mostly minding their own business, some gang colours but not much, the main cluster is outside doing their best to look tough. Lung has a few of his minions martial his new recruits here at the school, not many of the students are true believers. The belief of the ABB is that A) Lung's a fucking dragon and B) You belong to Lung and he will fuck with anyone who fucks with you, while not fundamentally different than what the Nazis use doesn't have the allure of the whole Ubermenschen business. He can still gather some truly devout followers though and dedicated minions see to a fair chunk of the Asian population. Turning the corner there's a small cluster of duggies, you ran with them once upon a time but now you can't do much other than pity them. The only proper merchant on campus is Slim Jim the dealer. He's about, somewhere, the man has an uncanny ability to find people in need of a fix. If you need him he'll find you.

Apart from the illustrious members of diverse BB social tapestry there's the normal high school bullshit. Traditional groups of students going too and fro, jocks, nerds, art people, social climbers, creeps, so on and so forth. none of them aggressive or well entrenched enough to be worth worrying about.

Except of course.

Those Bitches.

The gangs in the school have done away with most testosterone fueled violence, overly aggressive guys have promising careers in either gang if the correct race or in a drug den/grave if not. Not so with the girls, the art of social climbing is as vicious as ever within Winslow High and the three at the top of the totem pole just rounded the corner in front of you. Emma, Madison and Sophia, somehow three three have become the top of the town in winslow high enjoying a blind eye from the teachers while at the same time flaunting their power over the lower echelons of students.

Sophia was the one who got you thrown out of the track team and almost expelled. You are unsure what the other two get up to specifically but you hear the whispers, the rumors. Parallels to your father's world of power, rumor and rep are disturbing in their accuracy.

Choose your scheme.


	3. 102 Calm before the storm

[X] Follow them covertly, intercede and report any incident where they seem to blatantly break the school rules.  
-[X] Include cell phone video as available.  
[X] If no such incident occurs then do a direct confrontation where you pretend to accidentally trip them.  
[X] At some point when no one is watching use super-strength to shove a piece of wire (from a paperclip) inside the keyholes of their lockers so they can't open it.

* * *

You fall in behind the trio, just another student among the great unwashed sea of Winslow high casually abserving the queens of the domain whlie going about your daily business. for the time being they swan about the corridors Emma and Madison trading gossip and barbs with other girls as they pass. Sophia doesn't bother, always the brute of the group she makes a few comments to the others as the trio pull up at the head of the stairs.

You are unsurprising as you hear the trio suddenly go quiet as you open your locker. After a quick look you find Taylor Hebert, The Locker Girl, doing her best to get past them and move along with her day.

You don't know Taylor all that well, as far as you can tell the girl is a relatively normal if a bit tall and nerdy teenager. She certainly doesn't have any of the distinct features marking apart any of the other members of the school outcasts. The way she moves however is all too familiar, the hunch of her shoulders, overloaded backpack and furtive glances. It reminds you of what few people live in your fathers part of town, always scared, cowed by violence or drugs. Once upon a time she might have been a normal girl, happy, silly, gossipy like most of the others in school but now? Now not even the Nazis will stick up for her when a black girl is the primary bully.

You question your thinker about the specifics of your primary power in this situation and get a sort of gibbering enthusiasm, it wants you to confront them, yell at them, push them, trick them, taunt them and if given the chance double down on everything. It wants spectacle and it doesn't particularly care how many bridges, buildings or cities it has to burn down to get it.

You're on the right track to getting Buildup at least.

You listen carefully, catching a pointed barb from Emma and seeing a shove from sophia. Madison is keeping overwatch and distracting anyone from interfering. it's almost poetry in motio. The mechanism of the ambush and the enclosed area where the victim cannot escape is pretty much a textbook from the backalleys of your home neighbourhood, instead of doing it a back alley in the docks where no one will notice enough to car they have cowed the students to the point where no one cares enough to notice.

That leaves you an opening. It's a bit late now but you know from experience how difficult it is to keep an eye out on this many people. Anyone could be recording anything.

The rest of the day continues pretty much like that. You don't have many classes with either taylor or the trio but in those you do you start collecting evidence.

A snap of a cameraphone here, a bit of video there and the recording function conveniently left on during inopportune moments and it begins to paint a pretty nasty picture. The audio from Gladly's World Issues class is particularly damning, your phone picking up on the biting conversation of the girls sitting behind you as they actually orchestrate their next move within earshot of you.

Even dad isn't that careless.

It's wednesday night when you shove a nice long pin into the lock on Emmas locker, your power making sure that it's stuck nice and deep in there, making it entirely unable to be opened.

You take the time on Wednesday night to go through your recordings and tidy them up a bit. You aren't a video editor by any means but you manage to trim and tidy the content such that when you inevitably confront the girls you will have sufficient evidence to double down on the antagonism.

You have a neat four points of buildup from some of the more "interesting" recordings you've managed to get, another from the whole lock thin and another three or so from being offensively cheerful around the Nazis.

It's thursday morning you are at your locker, just down the hall from Gingernut Barnes. You can see that she's having slight bit if difficulty getting hers open and is responding with that calm measured response you have always associated with teenage girls.

'That Bitch. she's finally grown a backbone and what does she do. Jams my locker, she can't even retaliate properly...' You miss the rest of her words in the hubbub as a pack of nazis float by.

If one things for sure there's going to be a shitstorm today.


	4. 103 Audio Commentary

[X] Spring the trap, See how far this rabbit hole goes  
-[X] Warn Taylor about what you did (you did it for your own reasons, and because f*ck Sophia), and that you are recording things.

* * *

Emma's livid, utterly livid. It reminds you of Dad when he discovers something unpleasent. the amount of time you end up comparing these girls to a man who literally named himself on the stains left on week old underwear is sorta depressing you muse as you fish you phone out of your pockets and activate the audio recorder. in any case it's showtime.

You catch Taylor as she sits the stairs.

'Hey, Taylor. Taylor. You should be careful today, Emma's on the warpath.' You warn her, needing to stand on the next stair up to just be on eye level with the slender girl.

'Sorry?' She asks as she pulls her gaze from the floor.

'Emma. She's on the warpath. I'd watch out if I were you.' You warn again.

'Hebert!' You hear the shout from the top of the stairs as emma comes screaming down, flanked by flunkies.

"Emma, Wha..." Taylor begins before Emma cuts her off.

"You Bitch. You fucked with my locker, I always knew that you were a pathetic piece of shit. A weak pathetic girl like you can't even get revenge right if shoving a needle into my lock is the best you can do."

You think that's your cue. You step between the girls, forcing Taylor a step back onto the hallway linoleum as you place yourself neatly inside Emma's personal space.

"Ladies please. There's no reason to be throwing wild accusations. Just what precisely did she do which is so horrible." You say clearly and concisely with your best negotiation voice. The fact that being on the lower step roughly places your head level with Emma's chest doesn't really help however. You can't help but smile however as you feel a few units of Buildup fall into your metaphorical reservoir and a jolt of adrenaline hit your system.

"What's it to you Blake? Finally out of that shithole drug den you call a life to become friends with the most pathetic bitch on campus. If I were you I'd go back to where you came, at least the company's better." She barbs you, shoving you out of the way to have another go at Taylor.

"So Bitch tell me why you did it before I get you suspended for a week." she snaps at Taylor who almost flinches away from the readhead.

"Hey, hey, hey. There's no need for that. Seriously, What did she do?" You ask, "Taylor you haven't done anything to her locker have you?" As you place yourself in between them you get another satisfying chunk of power.

"No" the lanky girls says quietly, doing her best to hide behind her long curly hair.

"See, she said she didn't do anything. Now lay off her." You hold a warding hand out to keep off Emma.

"Why are you sticking up for her anyway Blake? Trying to get her to spread her legs for a druggie shitstain like you just like she does for anyone else? Hey, Taylor you've finally found an admirer, a merchant's a step up from your usual fare."

"Wow, The bitch levels are over nine thousand." You mutter in shock, Taylor snickers. "That was, wow. Dad would have used more swearing. But a good effort nonetheless." You step forward, the promise of power singing in your veins as you feel the squishy lump in your head tick over into availability for another power. You can't help but smile.

"Now, Gingernut. Could you tell this druggie son of shitstain precisely what this young woman is supposed to have done to warrant her getting expelled? I'm sure we'd all like to know. because if it's that you're too incompetent to get your locker open then I don't think you have any evidence." You take the effort to get right into her face for that, nice and confrontational. Any fear from the public performance drowned in power.

"She jammed my locker lock and I know she was the culprit only a sniveling little worm like her, would dare to do something so mean and worthless." she almost yelled.

"Ahh. So she didn't lock you in a locker of used tampons or trip you down the stairs or anything petty like that, jamming a locker lock is surely the greatest blow a man like me could hope to achieve against a woman like you." You give your biggest shit eating grin. "Hate to tell you this toots but she booked it just after World Issues class yesterday. Bugged out like the hounds of hell were on her tail, can't really blame her either given the bitches out for blood' You quip.

'Then she came in early this morning, nothing is below her.' She snapped.

'Taylor comes in late every morning, you know that. besides, how would she get the needle up into the lock anyway, you'd need a hammer or something to do it." You reply.

Before Emma can snap something off the bell for first class goes off and the crowd of students disperse. Emma and her minions give you a death stare which you are sure should have burnt the skin from your face, you give a cheerful smile and a wave, getting just a bit of power from that exchange.

In moments all that's left in the corridor is you and Taylor.

"A hammer?" Taylor asks, with morbid curiosity. You carefully extract your phone from your pocket an deliberately stop the recording in plain sightl. Only taylor is there to see it.

"Yup, just take a nail shove it in a give it a good hammer or two, work of a minute". You lie with a grin.

"But why?." She asks in confusion.

"had a lot of problems with drugs in the past, the Track team helped me keep my mind off it, that was of course until Sophia, the bitch, got me kicked off the team and almost expelled."

"The Canard Incident?" the morbid curiosity is back. You grimace and nod sadly.

"Anyway, I'm still here, but I can imagine where I would be if I wasn't, it isn't a nice picture. Also Fuck Sophia. Fuck. That. Bitch." you state with finality.

"Fuck. That. Bitch." Taylor responds with a crooked smile on her long mouth.

"Now recorded in high definition audio." You smirk. "Gotta get to class, see you later." You give her a small punch on the arm and rush off for class.

* * *

It's lunchtime and almost no one has said anything about this morning, at least not in earshot. your thinker power pops up like a door to door salesman with solutions to the problem in abundance. but you just muse about the people pointing and talking as you munch on the cut rate meatloaf the cafeteria is serving for lunch.

Funny. The trio aren't here you muse counting the myriad heads of the student body. The pack of girls that Sophias and her crew usually move with are looking a bit thinned. though the rest of the usual suspects are here. You place your tray on the stack as you head out the door, the work of a moment has you recording as you prowl the corridors looking for trouble.

As it turns out trouble is easy enough to find. You know that taylor usually hides in various places around the school. the toilet is the usual one and after all the fun this morning she would have gone to ground as best she could. When you round the corner to see a small gaggle of girls chatting suspiciously close to one of the toilets you're pretty sure that you've found your stop.

You march up to the toilet door, some of the girls whose names you don't bother to recognise attempt to get into your way but your relatively rudimental martial arts training pays off as you duck and weave around their less than expert attempts at slowing you.

*Knock Knock Knock*

"Taylor you in there? I need you help with that computing project.' You holler at the door. You do need at least some plausible deniability for when you inevitably end up in front of the principle.

"..." you hear a small Taylor sounding squeak from the other side of the door before hearing Emma's voice.

"The cowardly bitch isn't in here Druggie just a few unflushed turds." Emma shouts.

"Are you sure you aren't lying to me as part of your long-running and utterly unreasonable bullying campaign against an innocent teenager. 'Cause I thought I heard her in there."

"Blake, help." You hear faintly.

Welp. The game is afoot.

"Coming." You try to open the door, stuck. It appears that someone is jamming it.

Oh well.

You apply more force to the door ignoring the screams of Emma on the other side. You think she's promising a thousand fiery deaths to both you and Taylor. but you might be confusing her with dad again. You also deliberately ignore the other girls pull up their cameraphones trying to get their own evidence.

The door slides open after a few second of brute force, the faint squeaks of Madison as she gets squished up against the wall. Inside unlike the fabled tales of womens toilets there's just a long bank of cubicles where the mens would combine it with a urinal trough. and standing in the middle is a pissed of Emma, her face almost as red as her hair and the tall black form of Sophia Hess. A single cubicle is open revealing a bedraggled Taylor hebert, some kind of sticky substance in her hair and now open bag which is sprawled on the floor.

"Wow Taylor it almost appears that some unrepentant bullies have covered you and your bag in some kind of juice while you have been in this toilet." You say loudly and clearly. "Good thing there are only five people in this room and I have only arrived in the last ten seconds isn't it?"

You barely finish the words before Sophia grabs you by the scruff of the neck and nearly hoists you off your feet.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing Scum." the final work had more poison in it than some of your dads deliveries. but you can't help but give a shit eating grin to the athletic black girl and give a wink towards Taylor.

"Audio Commentary" You say glibly.

You feel a few units of Bu hit you power at the same time as Sophia's fist impacts your jaw and the bellow of one of the more attentive male teachers behind you.

It's some time later and you are sitting in the seats outside the principals office waiting for everyones parents to arrive. Dad isn't expected to make an appearance, you submitted a formal alteration of contact details form back when you decided to clean up your act because involving Skidmark of all people in a school situation Will make everything worse.

* * *

Not really a vote but the current course of action is [X] Spring the trap, See how far this rabbit hole goes and you haven't tried extortion on school authorities yet.


	5. 104 Over A barrel

[X] Continue, and let's see how far this goes.

-[X] While you wait, upload the evidence you took to some newly made online storages, just in case you phone gets confiscated or damaged

-[X] Be prepared for them to say that you recording stuff is a criminal offense (because they didn't consent to being recorded).

-[X]In case the subject of charges get's brought up, ask everyone if they need to keep their jobs . Charges MAY stick or not ,the whole debacle will eat them alive .

-[X] Hush out strategy with Taylor - like it or not, you are in it together at this moment, so it's better to present a unified front. What do you want from this?

-[x] Seriously, f*ck Sophia. Focus on her. She got you off the team. Try and do the same to her, at least.

NOTE: little pieces of this update are pulled from Worm 5.4

* * *

Taylor hasn't cleaned herself, nor her bag, up her long dark hair is plastered to her scalp and the shapeless hoodie and slacks she was wearing have long sticky stains down her back and legs, the clothes will come good after a wash. You've had worse stains, it should work. The things in her bag on the other hand are a complete write off. You zoom the image in on her bag, the books inside are deeply stained with the sugary purple liquid, workbooks and a number of textbooks sitting pretty much ruined.

"Is that good?" the tall brunette across from you asks.

"Yeah, that should do us." You swipe back to the camera function and pass the phone to Taylor who grips it in trembling fingers pointing the lens at you and tapping the smartphone several times to get a picture. she passes the device back to you hesitantly, slightly unsure of herself.

You pull up the picture she just took and Wow, it's not pretty. You hadn't been fighting back particularly hard against sophia, the bloodier the injuries the better the sob story. To her credit Sophia hadn't needed the help to do the heavy lifting on her end she fucked you up right proper before the teachers had managed to get her off you. She was surprisingly good in a fight, you're not all that great at Kung Fu, you know a thing or two, enough to roll drunks but she was on you like red on a rash.

You have a pair of black eyes, proper shiners, you can't even see out of the left one. You're pretty sure your nose is broken, you have a split lip, a shallow gash on your forehead from something, you don't know, and you're pretty sure you had a concussion but your regen took care of it before knocking off for the day.

Not quite aggravated assault, you muse but more than enough to get her expelled if you want it. What they did to taylor would be assault as well so you're doubly covered against anything they might come up with against you.

"Taylor, your dad have an email address?" You ask as you pull up your email browser

"I umm. D Hebert at Union dot com." She responds as you enter the address.

"What do you think you are doing." Emma snaps at you from the far side of the room.

The Bitches Three are sulking in another set of seats just down the hall from where you are, waiting for their various parents and guardians to show up. They aren't quite as chipper as they looked this morning, Emmas makeup is mussed but her cheeks are still coloured with a bit of fury and Sophia has a welt on her face where you managed to catch her during your flailing to keep you phone safe, Madison however is curled up in a ball her head buried in her knees where she sits on the chair.

"Sending an email, nothing important. Just a few pictures and audio files." You reply, tapping in Principal Blackwell's address.

"Well…" the affront on her face is priceless, as you grin back with your mangled visage. "You won't get away with this you know, my dad's a lawyer and he'll get us out of this and leave you pathetic losers to be expelled or something." She snaps.

"Well, might as well include him in the fun eh? What's his email." You ask, making the redhead rock back in her seat, lips sealed.

"He's a divorce lawyer at Brandish's law firm." You hear Taylor say softly beside you. Looking at her you see a faint smile on her face.

"Reeeeally." You draw out the syllable as you pull up the internet and find the data you're looking for, adding the addresses and putting the last touches on the email.

"Tay, you know anyone else who'd like in on this?" You ask to a muttered negative. Wincing as your eyebrow twinges you mash the send button, setting the information free.

"Did your dad find what you needed?" You ask.

"Yeah, he found it." The smile's gone from her face and she pulls herself tighter into a ball.

"Do you have a backup copy?" You ask. She shakes her head.

"Yeah. Well when your dad gets here we'll photocopy the whole thing. Wouldn't put it past these shits to take the evidence and ahem.. "misplace" it, can't let'em have the chance. Yeah?" you say.

"Yeah." She gives a faint smile. "How do know this stuff anyway?"

"Dad's got a lot of experience with the criminal justice system, so do a lot of his mates. You pick up things." you shrug, a criminal needed to know bits of the law, at least in a cursory fashion.

"Is your dad coming?" She asks innocently.

"Ha ha. Noooo. Not just No, but Heelll No. We do not need my father anywhere near shit like this. If he were here he would take this situation from manageable to shitstorm in about half a second. Thats if we're lucky." You shudder as you remember some of your dads more notable antics. You forged your dads signature on a change of address form months ago, the school can't contact him, all their correspondence goes straight to you and the prick hasn't even noticed that he isn't involved in your education anymore.

Taylor has actually cracked a smile at that. "He can't be that bad."

"If he got a notice of expulsion from her I could tell you that he would literally throw me a happy expulsion party with hookers, blow and a thousand things even more fucked up." You sigh, it's almost like a weight falling off your shoulders to tell this to someone else. "Welcome to my life."

"I…" She stops for a second. "Thanks Blake, for this. for taking the risk."

"Don't thank me yet. We're still not out of the woods." you reply.

* * *

Taylor and her dad enter the conference room about 45 minutes later, you make sure to swagger as you move, you are the one with the power here today. Taking the time to make the photocopies had made the three of you substantially late for the meeting but that's fine. It's not like you've got anything important to do today anyway.

Principal Blackwell is a narrow built blond woman with a supremely questionable bowl haircut which you would never see the attraction to. She sat at the end of the table with a few of the other senior teachers discussing something among themselves, on one side of the table sit the trio Madison and her parents look scared, truly scared at what is about to happen. Sophia is sitting next to another narrow blond woman in a blue blouse and khakis while Emma is flanked by both her mother and father. the father is a big man, simply huge, even while sitting you can tell that he outmasses you almost twice over. His wife is far more similar to their daughter, relatively short and large in the chest region.

Mr Hebert on the other hand looks a lot like his daughter, tall, far taller than you with greying hair and long lanky limbs and a long thin mouth similar to his daughter. You have heard of him before, the dockers occupy a relatively small bit of the docks district near the edge between merchants and ABB territory. They're completely legit and not a proper gange but they are, almost to a man, proper working class american with all that entails. He might not realize the power he has but if Danny Hebert put the word out for something his boys could faceroll most of the merchants save perhaps the capes.

But you wouldn't bet against him.

"Thank you all for coming." Blackwell states, the tone is authoritative teacher No 4. "We are here to discuss an issue were one of our students has been victimised, Miss Hebert"

"Here." she says softly.

"and Mr Bart."

"Heyyy." You put your feet on the table at the acknowledgement.

"Mr Bart, stop that this instant." She snaps.

"I expect you'd like to confiscate my phone as well. I mean, I'm recording this conversation, with my phone. Just like earlier today." You pull the offending article from your pocket and place it on the table, daring someone to take it.

"So you know Mr Bart, recording someone without their express permission is a felony." Barnes said, shuffling the few papers he had.

"Well sure, I figure there's something about filming the girls change rooms or toilet or something but there's all these security cameras around places and they aren't getting sued. The hallway's a public place I reckon, so it's cool." You shrug.

Blackwood coughs.

"Yeah, what?"

She points at your feet on the table.

"Yeah, No. It ain't happening. Get on with it." You snap.

"Mister Bart, we cannot start this discussion while you continue to show such disrespect for the school." She snaps at you, you raise a swollen eyebrow in response.

"I think we can, really. Nothing's stopping us. Here, let's start with the easy bit. We are not here today because the three stooges over there verbally and physically assaulted Taylor over here." You pause "We are here because I felt like recording them verbally and physically assaulting Taylor and then when I intervened and tried to find Taylor at lunchtime I found her in the process of getting assaulted and having her belongings vandalized. I just had time to inform everyone that I was recording this shit when psycobitch longlegs punched me in the face. Did I miss anything?"

"Locker." Taylor responds quietly, she's holding her fathers hand tight and you can see her knuckles are white. everyone else in the room is in a stunned silence

"Oh yeah, I didn't need to do much to find a nice and nasty altercation. Someone who shall remain unnamed hammered a needle into Emmas locker lock and broke it off. When Emma discovered her broken lock she automatically blamed Taylor. I tried to intercede, but no luck on that. The worst part is that shit like this has been going on for months. Sophia got me thrown off the track team a few months ago, almost got me expelled. Remember that Blackwood? Hmm?"

"I remember Blake, I recall that I was extremely lenient with your punishment." she responded with fury in her voice.

"Yeah, and you believed sophia's version of events when there was no one but her and her cronies there to back her up. Then there's that business with the locker which I imagine would have been fun for all involved."

"There was no evidence or any witnesses of that." Snaps Barnes.

"So you say. Word is on the street that Armsy has a tinkertech lie detector in his helmet. Give the Tin Man half an hour and he'll know precisely who, what and where. Fuck me sideways won't that put the cat among the pigeons." You let everyone soak that in.

The silence stretches on for a while.

"You know, you guys are so lucky that that wasn't a trigger event because seriously, that kinda shit would make most first generation capes sick. Fuck. Some capes have triggered from way, way less." You feel a comparatively massive chunk of Bu hit your power and your stomach drops, that hit a nerve, a big one.

Someone else in the room is a cape.

"So, Does anyone else have something else to say?" You ask. "Because now that I have established precisely how big a barrel we have you over you might want to check your emails. Jus' sayin."

Half the room glowers at you, Taylor fingers the copy of her diary for a long moment while Madison curls up into a ball between her parents who hug their little girl while exchanging cold glances between each other. Welp, she's fucked.

Barnes and Blackwell have their own devices in front of them and you're pretty sure they're pulling up their email.

"Make sure you read the CC's folks, lotsa fun there." You wink at Taylor, She takes a large breath grabs the copy and stands.

"Blake, How long does your recorder last?" She asks, some steel in her voice but a lot of fear.

You check it, "Battery's at three quarters,you should be food for a few hours." You respond, checking the screen.

"Okay, I can do this." Danny puts his hand on her shoulder, and she closes her eyes at the contact.

"My name is Taylor Hebert. I… I Started keeping a diary of the bullying after summer break last year. This is a recording of the comments from beginning to end." She took a teep breath

"September eighth. Six vicious emails, Sophia pushed me down the stairs when I was near the bottom, making me drop my books, tripped and shoved me no less than three times during gym, and threw my clothes at me while I was in the shower after gym class had ended, getting them wet. I had to wear my gym clothes for the rest of the morning. In biology, Madison used every excuse she could to use the pencil sharpener or talk to the teacher, and each time she passed my desk, she pushed everything I had on my desk to the floor. I was watching for it the third time, and covered my stuff when she approached, so on the fourth trip, she emptied the pencil sharpener into one of her hands and dumped the shavings onto my head and desk as she walked by. All three of them cornered me after school had ended and took my backpack from me, throwing it in the garbage." (from Worm 5.4) She took a breath for a moment.

"I think that's enough miss Hebert. You have made your point." Blackwell states, She's got her head between her hands and her eyes closed.

"I don't think she has." Snapped Danny. "I don't think you grasp just how badly you've failed my daughter. We will stay here until Taylor reaches the end. Blake, you don't need to stay if you don't want to." he offers to you.

"Nah, I'll stay. Gotta see the looks on their faces. Seen bad shit before, ain't seen it happen to proper people. Just people like me, people they don't think are worth shit. Good to see that they're just as bad on the inside as some of my dad's folks."

The tall man gives you appraising look before motioning Taylor to continue.

"September ninth…."

* * *

You lied.

You thought that you'd seen some bad shit before, the guys who work for your father are hardly saints, but this shit was fucking brutal. By the time that Taylor reaches the dozenth entry you're ready to knock off for the day but then the girl keeps going and it doesn't get better, it just gets worse, on and on and on. No wonder it was so easy to gather evidence, you thought it was bad only in the faint way that another student knows rumors around the school. You were wrong, all you needed to do was look in the correct direction at the correct time.

You kinda feel dirty for taking advantage of her like this, but then again after today she'll never have to deal with these bitches again.

Madison is taking the whole thing in a calm and reasonable manner, curling up into a ball and sobbing silently, her parents are barely doing any better. Emma and her dad are trying to be strong, her mum stormed out of the room earlier and you suspect is sobbing uncontrollably outside. Sophia, well, Bitchus Maximus looks livid, utterly thoroughly livid. you're pretty sure that she wants to leap over the table and throttle you and your insufferable grin. the woman here with her is… different. not saying anything, not moving, but staring at Taylor unflinchingly.

Something smells fishy about that.

Taylor continues and you distract yourself from what is probably one of the most fucked up things you've ever heard by watching the woman with Sophia, you can't help but try to figure out the odd thing about her. She isn't Sophias mum, sure as shit and she isn't even paying attention to the girl. She's watching Taylor instead, taking notes.

Why would someone like that be taking notes about Taylor. The woman is early thirties and built lean, severe blonde hair, strong arms and a steely look to her face.

Hmm.

A social worker who looks like a soldier watching Taylor like a hawk. Fuck. It ain't coming to you.

Taylor finishes with the first of march, yesterday.

"Just so everyone know I've only got photos of like half that shit since Monday. Not half as good a sleuth as I thought I was apparently." you point at each of the parties in turn.

"Alright, alright." Hebert senior sounds like he's about to blow a gasket despite his words. "January after the locker, where my daughter was hospitalized you Principal Blackwell told me that you would have the teachers look after her, that you would keep an eye out for here. WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T THAT HAPPEN! WHY THE FUCK AM I HERE NOW JUST LISTENING AS MY GIRL TELLS ME JUST HOW YOU FAILED HER! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!"

"Mr Hebert, You have to understand, other things demand our attention. There's a gang presence in this school, and we deal with serious events like students bringing knives to class, drug use, and students suffering life threatening injuries in fights on the campus. If we're not aware of certain events, it's hardly intentional." A teacher responds.

"So you mean my daughters situation, Taylors situation, isn't serious. That doing your fucking jobs isn't serious!"

"That's not what we're saying." Her responds.

"That's exactly what you're saying fuckface." You snap "That one little white girl with no criminal connections, or people on the outside willing to fuck you up isn't worth taking care of. That three bitches who are popular get to have the run of the school because they are the ones who have the power. Because the lot of you fucks are so fucking useless that you can't put the miniscule effort necessary into disciplining students who don't have anyone to back them up either let alone the Nazis or the Chinks." You give them all the hairy eyeball.

"Mr Bart, that's not what we're saying." Blackwell responds.

"Bitchtits that's exactly what it is you're saying. That you're too incompetent to give detentions to someone who doesn't have friends in low places let alone those who do.

As much as I'd like to drag this shit out I'm just gonna tell you that this is going to go one of two ways.

One, you give us what we want and you jump through the hoops we want you to then, if you're lucky, you get to keep your jobs and you get to go on living your shitty incompetent little lives.

Two. You don't and Me and Tay press charges. That isn't the end you know cause this is Brockton Bay Bitches! This town has a bad case of the nazis and the law only lasts as much as the man made of knives says it does. When Kaiser opens up his newspaper in a week or two to find on the headlines that a race traitor has allowed a "Nigga Bitch" to bully a pure Honest White Girl, a daughter of the true pillar of the community. A pillar of the community who incidentally is in charge of hiring the best group of True Blue American henchmen in the city out for various jobs. That the race traitor then after allowing the white girl to get the Gesellschaft Special proceeds to do nothing. Just sit there on her pretty blond arse while The Nigga Bitch goes back to work.

The fact that it took a little shrimpy Untermenschen like yours truly to get you to do anything about this shit is just the icing on the cake. Innit?"

"Mr Bart, this is not the wild west.." make her talk to the hand before looking her coldly in the eyes.

"Blackwood, not two miles away there is a man who can turn into a living mass of knives, another man who could pull the very ability to walk from your mind and a woman who could level skyscrapers if she sneezed at the wrong time. If we take this to court what you have done will have deeply offended the core values of them and their friends. They will throw you a Nazi Party faster than you can say Springtime for Muthafuckin Hitler. And I'll tell you right now there's no party Like a muthafucking Nazi Party."

There's a stunned silence in the room.

"No party like a Nazi Party." Taylor giggles.

"A Muthafuckin Nazi Party, It's a proper and accurate adjective in this case." You mutter to Taylor who collapses into giggles.

"I see." Blackwood draws the word out, visibly shaken at the prospect of a visit from Hookwolf.

"Just what would you two like to see happen, here, at this table, that would have you walk away satisfied?"

"Transfer me to Arcadia High." Taylor said

There were a few looks of surprise.

"I expected you to suggest expulsion," the principal answered, "Most would."

"Fuck no," She said, pressing her fingers to her temple "No, no expulsion. Because that just means they can apply to the next-closest school, Arcadia, and because they aren't enrolled in school, it would mean accelerated entry past the waiting list. That's just rewarding them."

"Rewarding," The principal spoke. I think she was insulted. Good.

"I'd certainly want to be there than here. They've got good shit there, reputation, a budget, cleaners. I bet they'd even have security cameras or some shit, won't find any of dads people on that campus." you say

"That's all you would want?" another teacher asked.

She shook her head. "No. If it were up to me, I'd want those three to have in-school suspension for the remaining two months of the semester. No privileges either. They wouldn't be allowed dances, access to school events, computers, or a spot on teams or clubs."

"Sophia's one of our best runners for the track team."

"I really, really don't care," She replied.

"Why in-school suspension?" The principal asked, "It would mean someone would have to keep a constant eye on them."

"Suspension's a vacation," She retorted, "and it just means they could take a trip over to Arcadia and get revenge on me there. No. I'd rather they got no punishment at all than see them get suspended or expelled."

"That's an option." The lawyer joked.

"Fuck you Alan."

"We don't have the staff to manage somthing like that, we're understaffed as it is." the principal protests.

"Well your shitty personnel management got you into this situation to begin with bitch. You're just going to suck it up and make it happen otherwise its time for the Gutentag Hop Clop." You respond.

"Just so everyone's on the same page. Taylor has just made an eminently reasonable offer based on the assumption that we don't have you all over a fuckbarrel. To satisfy me you will give both of us transfers to Arcadia, I expect to see the first paperwork by the end of next week. Furthermore, I don't want to see those bitches at school until we're gone, so a regular suspension until then, in school suspension for the rest of the semester and detention, lunchtime and after school until the end of the year. During this time I don't want to hear about them having any privileges at all and I will hear about it. If I so much as smell Sophia at an interschool track meet this scandal will hit the papers so fuckkin' fast your heads will spin. any questions?" you ask.

"Blake this is completely unreasonable. I'm sure we can come to a compromise which everyone can live with."

"Ooooooor you can live with doing what I tell you because you have failed so utterly in your duty as an educator that it took me three days of work, three, to gather enough evidence to have you begging for mercy. Consider yourself lucky that I haven't commanded you immortalize this whole thing with a brass statue extolling my infinite virtues bolted to the desk in reception." You get out of your char and put on your jacket.

"Right, I got shit to do now. Look for the recording of this meeting in your inbox and fuck you all and the horse you rode in on.

Heberts.

We're done here.

Lets go."


	6. 105 End of the beginning

[X] "All that negotiating has made me hungry, I think I'm going to head off to the nearest cafe"  
\- [X] Invite Taylor and her Dad along.  
\- [X] Apologize to Taylor - you did kinda exploit her situation to get yourself a transfer to Arcadia, despite having no evidence of any wrongdoing against yourself  
\- [X] Try to cheer the girl up a bit, she deserves it. And you could use a friend whose father leads a large union of henchmen  
\- [X] Speculate on what's going to happen and remind Taylor that, for the next two weeks or so (until the transfer) both she and you will be under microscopes, as Blackwell would try to get some leverage over you  
\- [X] Be prepared, and make sure Taylor is prepared for out-of-school retaliation. Make sure to always have an alibi for one.  
[X] As you eat, try to figure out who in the meeting was a cape. It's likely one of the teenagers, though you can't discount adults either.

* * *

"Grrrr. Fukkin fucks." You clench and unclench your hands while standing on the sidewalk outside the school. you take a few breaths to steady yourself like the sensei at the dojo tried to teach you. It helps a bit. you pull out your phone and dispatch the recording.

Man it's so fucked up, you don't even…

"Blake." you turn to find the Heberts, taylor in the lead standing behind you.

"Hey Taylor. I, Just… Just… Fuck. That was fucked up. Sorry I made you go through that again." You wince with the pain of your eyes twinging at you.

"No Blake. I… Thanks. It was worth it to take down those bitches. If you didn't get those recordings I don't know how long it would have gone on for." She closes her eyes for a moment and Danny squeezes her shoulder. 'You really saved me."

You can't help but grin a bit at that, You saved someone. You Blake Bart, son of Skidmark, Saved someone. Fuck the haters.

"Say, I've got like, an hour or so before I need to get to the dojo for training. You want to grab some dinner before that and hash out where we go from here. It's sorta the first time I've blackmailed local government we might need a plan." you say hiking your thumb in the general docks direction.

"Yeah, okay." Taylor smiles.

Turns out Danny Hebert does have some experience in corporate blackmail you learn while digging into your Fugly Bobs Chefs Special (with extra burnt crunchy bits) at the eponymous Fugly Bobs.

He regales you with a few stories of his past as hiring manager at the dockers union. turns out there's a lot of secrets which flow around this town and a few which pass through his office. each one of those is worth a few extra weeks worth of work for some of his boys to purchase silence. Taylor's shocked at the information, the girl thought her dad was a bastion of true american honest work etcetera etcetera, and he is but you know full well that in this world that means you leverage the information you have whenever someone else is foolish to give it to you. leveraging circumstances and secrets for concessions is just the way of the world.

"I think the school will give in to our demands without much of a fuss. If I didn't know better they have already probably rolled over." he takes a swig of his beer. "Alan will probably try to raise a fuss, he's a lawyer and I dont know how good your evidence is." he looks at you with a raised eyebrow.

'Tff prrry fuggn gooob.' You say between sweet juicy crunch fatty mouthfulls.

"What did you say when you got into the bathroom 'Good thing there are only five people in this room and I have only arrived in the last ten seconds isn't it?' wasn't it." Taylor asked.

You nod as you finish swallowing the mouthfull. "And then Bitchosaurus asks what I thought I was doing." You give a half second for the sentance to sink in before taylor joins you for "Audio Commantary." the both of you spend some time chuckle into your hamburgers.

"What happened then?" Danny asks.

"She broke my nose, on tape. I couldn't have scripted it better if I tried." Taylor keeps on chuckling at the schadenfreude.

"A competent lawyer could probably try to get it thrown out but by the time that happens the story will be all over the news."

"And Stormfront. I've got a bunch of dummy accounts there, Phrase it properly and the Nazis will be all over this shit. If it comes to that the two of you should probably book it or at least lay real, real low for a while. The 'Concerned True Blue Americans' of the nazi party will probably overlook me but they will want the two of you to make to make good on the 'debts' you get from them coming in on 'your side'." You tell them.

"It Shouldn't come to that, the school has much much more to lose than we do from this thing. they'll probably be on their best behaviour but I'll make some arrangements, just in case." Danny says.

"Anyone notice that woman with Sophia? She was looking at you taylor like a hawk through the whole thing. Doesn't she have someone else who could attend." you take a bite of your burger and munch thoughtfully.

"She was unusual." Replied Danny, "It looked like she was maybe a case worker, She didn't look like the type of person who'd adopt a teenage girl. Especially one like Sophia. Hrrmm."

"Why would Sophia have a case worker? and why would she be paying more attention to me than Sophia?"

"Dunno, maybe she thought you were a cape or something. But given the year you've had…" a big chunk of Buildup hits your power before you finish the sentence.

Fuckaduck.

Really?

"It would be almost impossible for a cape to restrain themselves from lashing out in the school?" You finish, barely missing a beat. Taylor is looking at you, looking at her looking at you.

Yep.

Fucked.

"Sorry, what were you saying Blake?" Danny asked. "I was just thinking about that woman, I still can't figure out what she was there for and missed what you said." he trailed off

And thank fuck for that Danny.

"He was just musing on her motivations, she might have been cape hunting." Taylor intercedes.

"Yeah, But why would, lets assume a "case worker" with Sophia be cape hunting in a meeting like that. It's not like she could be a cape." A single, solitary fragment of buildup lands in your reserves.

Really.

For fuck sake. Was everyone in that fucking meeting a fucking cape?

"The wards all go to Arcadia so she couldn't be one of them and she wouldn't fit with the Empire or the ABB, Merchants?"

"Hell No. the merchants might be druggies blitzed out of their minds on a hundred and fifty different mind bending chemicals which they don't understand but damnit they have standards." You state bombastically.

Taylor and her dad give you a dry look. you can practically see the scepticism on their faces.

"Okay, they don't have standards but she's so psycho she's only last a few days before Squealer'd electrocute the bitch." You respond to nods and murmurs from the Heberts.

You scarf down the last of the burger with that and wash it down with your coke.

"You need to leave?" Danny asks.

You nod, "Yeah, class starts innnn…" You check your phone "fourteen minutes so I've gotta leg it. You two watch out for yourselves, wouldn't put it past that Barnes fellow or someone to frame you up with something to keep you quiet." They both nod, Taylor only halfway through her burger.

before you go you bop her on the shoulder.

"You. Me. Lunch. Cafeteria. Tomorrow. Gotit?" You ask her. She waits a moment before giving a nod, her mouth full of burger.

"Cool see you then." You give her a double thumbs up before waving goodbye to her dad and legging it up the street.

* * *

 **Power Get!**

A Bloody Business:

Regenerate whole blood from arterial walls at a rate of 100ml/sec given your normal arterial surface area.

Purify and optimize the composition(CO2, O2, sugar, hormones, drugs, the lot) of whole blood at a rate of 200ml/sec. blood supply is sufficient that you will never bleed out.

The Hungry Blood:

Blood is able to consume nonliving carbon based matter (including plastics) it is in contact with in order to create new blood at a 2:1 mass ratio.

Rate is dependent in the available surface area and is limited to .5mm/s through solid plastic. living matter under 1cm cubed can be devoured if outmassed 10:1.

Blood has a limited lifespan outside the body of 30 sec with access to free atmosphere, it requires constant feeding to maintain existence, can only replicate to a maximum of 20x initial mass.

Blood can be recalled into body at will, up to 10X normal blood volume can be stored internally without decay. Provides apertures in the wrists and ankles which may be opened at will to allow blood to leave or enter.


	7. 201 A thing I can do

[X] After the lessons end, go home  
-[X] Experiment with and explore any new powers  
-[X] Destroy or at least hide anything that might indicate you are a cape  
[X] Skip to the next school day, at lunch  
-[X] Offer Taylor to introduce her to the dojo you are going to. It would be good to stick together, and self-defense is useful in this city, especially for people like us.  
-[X] Also suggest she should keep an eye out for possible tails and surveillance, Emma and Sophia aren't going to take this lying down, and one more mugging in this city won't go amiss.  
-[X] Tell her about you and Sophia being capes as well as that you know she is a cape.

-

The first thing you decided once you got up this morning is that superpowers are awesome. your head feels clear, no cravings for food, drink, caffeine or other substances. Bloody Business really comes through on its promise. you even tried holding your breath and gave up after about five minutes when it became clear you weren't getting anywhere.

The Hungry Blood however is really hungry, ravenous even. The nature of your blood has changed, when it oozes from the aperture in your wrist it sort of obeys your commands, flowing too and fro on your skin as a sheet of deep burgundy red wherever you desire but keeping a thin trail back to its aperture of origin. you can recall it just as easily and it gets slurped up in thick rivulets from the furthest part backwards rather than obeying any rules of fluid dynamics. You first test it on a pile of old phonebooks in an old tin bathtub and it eats them in a matter of moments before sitting as a pool of red goo in the bottom of the bathtub. it's easy enough to recall the blood, you just stick a finger in and sort of will it into you, in less than a minute the tub is empty and you are feeling strangely full.

You ping your thinker power about that and it tells you that you overfilled your blood reserves, you top out at 55.5 liters of blood. Bloody business subsumed the extra as unnecessary mass.

Testing that particular fact lead you to your current predicament.

You piled various bits and pieces in your tub, old toys, the contents of the garbage tin, a pair of old shoes a few bits of wood and some crappy broken bits of electronics. When you let a small trickle of blood slide down the side if the tub and it consumes everything. The old pieces of fabric and dust from the garbage are the first to go followed by the paper and loose objects, the plastic from the computer components and the rubber from your old boots take the longest, being large solid nonporus objects you suppose.

It's when you try to reabsorb the blood that you begin to run into problems. you feel full by the time you're halfway through the tub, the pool of viscous burgundy liquid almost look up at you accusingly so you soldier on. with about a quarter of the fluid left you hit your absolute maximum capacity and thats when things begin to go wrong, you keep pulling the blood so it pools around the aperture on your wrist before your sleeve slides down to contact it.

As it turns out the power is highly indiscriminate when it comes to targets and you can't recall it when you're already full.

It also turns out that fabric is very nearly its favorite food.

It's also fairly fucking cold in your bedroom. You've got a fairly serious case of shrinkage here and the fucking drafts. God damn, the Fucking Drafts.

Minus: you're going to have to be really careful to not accidentally nudify yourself or allies by accident.

Plus: you have a nudifier. The shenanigans to be had.

You manage to find and slide on a fresh pair of undissolved undies as you finish that thought with a smirk. by the time you're fully dressed again, this time in crisp clean clothes rather than your ratty old dressing gown you notice the blood level dropping in the tub.

Oh right.

The blood on the surface has a fairly short lifespan and dies pretty quickly, once it does the live blood underneath consumes it almost instantly. The level of the tub is dropping pretty steadily, you reckon that in about fifteen minutes it'll be all gone. You think for a moment and pour some blood into an old jar you had lying around. once you seal the lid the blood level stabilizes after a moment or two.

Handy.

The last thing you do before you head off for school is grab an old pair of clippers from the workshop.

Fuck. This is gonna hurt like a muthafucker but you gotta do it.

You pick your left little toe, you can deal without a left little toe for a few days you reckon. and place it between the clippers.

Do you really have to do this, You mean, it ain't really necessary you could get around it and the chances of someone taking the time to permanently off you now is pretty much zero. Buuuut.

Pretty much zero ain't zero.

You wince as you bring the brick down on the handle of the clippers and Fuck does it hurt. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Muthafuck. Ouch.

Why the fuck did you think this was a good Idea.

Immortality, that's right. Good grief does it hurt though.

You hop around for a few minutes on the bare concrete floor careful not to accidentally eat a table or something. that's a possibility now. the pain fades quickly and when you look down the stump of the toe in question has been covered by a thin red sheet of skin, apparently a toe is vital enough to get immediate regen from your power. Handy, you put aside half an hour to let it knit up again but it only took five minutes.

Now that you can walk again you look at the bit you cut off, It's regenerated a small amount as well, just enough to seal the cut end over and make it a closed system. taking your shears you cleave it in half again, creating two small chunks which you drop into separate small jars, they seal over relatively quickly and you slide them into your bag along with a spare pair of shoes and socks. you're fairly sure that if the new skin on your stump breaks you can recall the blood before it eats too much but it's good to have a backup just in case.

On the way to school you throw one of the jars, the one with the larger chunk, into a dumpster as you pass, the little thing is pretty tough and in the tip there's plenty of organics you can subsume should you ever get sacrificial regen. The second gets slipped into a storm drain where it'll wash out to sea, nice and safe from retribution.

-

Tater tots and lasagne, it's one of those rare lucky days where the cafeteria is actually serving something decent. You wave at taylor as she enters and comes and sits across from you at the table you have to yourselves, what you did yesterday kinda made you persona non grata among a pretty large section of the student body.

"Mornin'." you say as the lanky gril slide into the seat.

She pops open her lunchbox to reveal a neat cut lunch. "You know dad doesn't know about this." she remarks casually to you.

"Yeah, neither does mine. If he found out he'd try to force me into the family business and i'm trying to avoid that if I can."

"Really?" she asks arcing a thin eyebrow eyebrow at you.

"I live 'bout half an hour on foot north of the docks." You say.

"But that's?" she starts.

"Eeeeeyup. So that's my family such as it is." You shrug. She gets the message.

"The bitches aren't back." she changes the subject.

"and thank fuck for that. I reckon they won't take it lying down so keep an eye out for anything too suspicious."

"I haven't noticed anything, if there were something i'd have found it." She smiles at that.

"A thing you can do?" you ask, a corner of her mouth twitches upwards at the question.

"And you?" she asks softly, tucking into her lunch

"Apart from my heritage there's nothing for them to find and violence probably won't work."

"A thing you can do?" You nod slightly to her and she chuckles.

The two of you spend a companionable few minutes digging into your lunches, the cafeteria food in it greasy deliciousness doesn't do much for you, a side effect from Bloody Business you reckon.

"Have you thought of doing martial arts?" you ask.

"I dont have the money, I would if I could but."

"No cash. Hrrrmmmmm. I'll probably be able to spring for a few lessons." Taylor face turns red at the offer.

"No, you don't need to do that Blake."

"Tay, consider it an apology for the shit I pulled on you yesterday. Besides if all else fails we can always borrow some from dad, He doesn't keep as good an eye on his wallet as he should." you wink at her.

"Really?" She says flatly.

"Yeah, easy there'll be no evidence we were ever there. besides like I said I'll take the hit for the first couple of weeks." You offer.

"Yeah, Okay." she smiles, her thin mouth turning up at the edges. "But first could you meet me after school to to talk about yesterday without the audience."

-


	8. 202 Lotta Bugs

Yea! (please note the writeup started about 23 hours ago.)

The remainder of school was largely uneventful, you and Taylor share almost no classes and none today. You did end up exaggerating a few rumours for points and shiggles, when you've got two black eyes it's amazing the amount of things that people will take at face value.

You trudge down the road to the meeting place Taylor picked, when you get there you find the lanky girl leaning against the wall with her eyes closed.

"'Ello. I don't have a tail do I. I think I would have noticed when I tried to sit down." Taylor snorted at the awfull pun. "Really if I had a tail I bet it'd be really badly behaved, playing grabass all the time and stealing candy from babies."

"Really, Blake" she mutters.

"No tail?" You ask, mock affronted.

The girl gives a long suffering sigh "No Blake, no tail. Now what can you do?" She asks.

"Kung fu, Running, Immortality… You know. The usual." You shrug as she leads you towards an old abandoned house not to far from the school.

"A brute?" She smiles.

"Kinda, sorta, yes. Strange kind of trump actually, the brutey bits are just a side effect of it really." You lever open the back door to the old house and hold it open for Taylor who strides in without even a glance to the side. "So what about you?" You say as you follow the girl into the room without really paying attention to where you're going.

Holy Fucking Fuck. That's a muthafucking lot of muthafucking spiders.

Taylor holds her hand out to the side and a cluster of black widows descend from the ceiling and come to rest on her hand.

"Bug control." She states with a small smile.

You suddenly realize this is one of the few people in the city which could kill you outright with your current power set. You ping your thinker power on precisely how much this scale of bug control would cost.

Couplea hundred points with a bunch of limitations.

"What's your range? you ask in shock.

"A few blocks. Maybe a quarter mile. So what is your power precisely." she asks innocently, the entire Fucking ceiling load of spiders just started to slide off the ceiling and down into the basement and she didn't focus on it or anything.

"I… I… That's a lotta bugs." You stutter.

"Only a couple of million" Taylor responds.

"Only. Only she says." You feel your assessment power triple the cost.

"I… Umm…." you take a deep calming breath. "My power calls itself the Audacious Collector it kinda collects minor powers and then gives them to me once conditions are met. I collect buildup by doing thing which are audacious. Like that business yesterday and shit. Capes give more buildup when I piss them up, It's how I figured you out. You were the only person in the room yesterday when I got a big chunk of power." You shiver, watching the last of the spiders scamper into the basement leaving a near pristine room behind them, not a web to be seen. "You might want to know that I got a chunk of power when we were talking about Bitchosaurus so there were three different capes in that meeting yesterday, like we need more problems." Taylors lips press into a thin straight line, her hands clench and unclench and you hear a sullen buzzing come from the basement.

"It's not important, not now. What are your other powers" She asks and you explain the ones you have at the moment. Demonstrating your strength on a rock from outside and dissolving the enamel on the old tub upstairs and showing off your toe stump.

"So you are practically immortal and have a nudifier touch which you have to be super careful with otherwise you end up naked at the worst moment?" She asks and you confirm.

"And I have a thinker power which lets me know what sorts of powers I can choose between and how they interact with each other." You say. "I'm thinking that my next power might be either a healing power where I can use excess blood as fuel or perhaps a super learning power. so I can learn to fight properly."

"I thought you did martial arts?"

"The sensei assesed me last week and told me that I was I quote 'An undisciplined mess with no solid footwork and a complete disregard for your own safety. It's only possible merit is unpredictability.' A damn side better than my previous assessment." she giggles at that.

"The most I do is run." you smile at her admission.

"Soooo. What are the specifics of your power?" You ask, dropping your bag and sitting on the floor.

"I haven't found a limit to the amount of bugs I can control and my control is good enough that I can make each one dance individually." You raise an eyebrow at her and a line of spider marches from downstairs and starts to do a complicated dance on the floor of the old house.

"Can you see through them?"

"Kinda. I've tried to see or listen using them but bug senses don't translate well, I can tell where they are…"

"All of them?"

"Yeah, I can tell where they are with exact precision. I'm using the spiders to weave me a costume. Spider silk is supposed to be four or five times as strong as kevlar so it should be bulletproof against handguns and the like."

"So you put bugs on people to make sure you know where they are."

"Used to do it to the bitches, I't how I avoided them since I triggered. tried to avoid them anyway, Sophia always seemed to be able to find me. Superpowers?"

"Yeah, probably. I'm thinking of getting a shapeshifting power instead of a costume, so I can get myself some proper superstrength to go with my regeneration."

"Smart, I suppose a regular costume would be a little dangerous. hungry blood and all." she puts her bag down and sits across from you .

"Yeah, I might have kinda found that out this morning. my bedroom is slightly more drafty than i thought it was." You grimace with the words, and Taylor smiles with the joke.

You spend the rest of the afternoon talking cape things with Taylor, she agrees to come to martial arts with you starting monday and you have agreed to pay for the next two weeks of lessons in thanks.

-

Ideas from discussion.

Minor sensory hyperprocessing

Permanant single use striker power

Enhances sensory comprehension to allow comprehension of all sensory inputs.

No memory enhancement.

Does not draw attention to incogruities or details, merely integrates inputs.

-

You have a [Good] relationship with Taylor Hebert, insect controller. (master 5, thinker 2) she is available for shenannigans should you ask nicely and it agrees with her moral alignment.

She may from time to time ask for your assistance in certain matters.

relationship data will be entered into character sheet.

-


	9. 203 Nekkid Nazis

[X] Operation N2 "Naked Nazis"  
-[X] Identify some nazis that are not associated with Winslow in any way  
-[X] No one underage  
-[X] Have Taylor use some mosquitoes to drink your hungry blood, or have her use some flies to cover themselves in it. Maybe have her soak some silk in it, and then have it be carried by flies  
-[X] From far away, drop the hungry blood "seeds" onto nazi clothes (ideally, into their pants) while they are in a public area  
-[X] But not in ABB territory; you don't want to start a gang war  
-[X] Make sure that neither you, nor Taylor, are seen  
-[X] Do so no more than two days straight, and avoid running into capes. You aren't ready, and neither is Taylor. You want to get into Arcadia, damnit.

*Gloop*

"Test fifty three. Failure." Taylor said, marking down the results of the test in her Cape book.

It's Friday afternoon and the two of you are in the basement of the abandoned house that taylor found yesterday taking your powers for a test drive. The poured concrete slab of the floor making an ideal place to practice with your blood without accidentally eating the house, or each others clothes or half the neighborhood. you smashed a small jar of the stuff in an abandoned lot on the way to school this morning and wound up with a dirty great crater in the ground filled with the goopy burgundy fluid. It wouldn't pay to have something like that happen to the house, well not without intending it.

A fly trailing a length of spider silk had attempted to dip the silk into a small basin of blood so it could carry the shenanigan laden payload for remote bombing.

unfortunately the blood was somewhat more hungry than you had given it credit for, climbing the silk in a shot and engulfing the fly, in less than a moment nothing was left, even the creatures chitin was gone before the resulting blob of red hit the surface of the bowl.

"Hmmm…." The both of you look at your result. dipping the bugs in the blood simply resulted in them getting eaten by the voracious liquid, too small it seemed. Larger bugs like spiders and beetles had their own difficulties, too large to get eaten they instead were almost drowned by the viscous fluid and even then the blood rapidly disintegrated from their surface when they got back out into the air.

"Aha. I've got it!" Taylor exclaimed, you raise an eyebrow at the girl. "Hold still blake." You don't move as a small mosquito swoops down and perches on the back of your hand.

Slowly the Vermin drinks and instead of blooming into the expected glob of blood the small insect began to swell with it's ill gotten gains. by the time it's finished the small bug drunkenly swerves through the air with its wings beating furiously.

"Your blood tastes funny."

"Well sorry for having the greatest weapon of mass disgrace the city has ever seen ms Queen of the Sky Vampires."

"You still taste funny Boy Wonder." You scoff at her remark . It's all in jest but it is nice to have someone that you can at least trust a little bit after you left the Winslow druggies behind.

"So how much blood did we get in the little bugger?" You ask.

She flies the aforementioned insect up to one of the old wooden shelves and crushes it with a finger. It doesn't take long for the fluid to do its thing but moments later there's a hemispherical hole the size of a penny in the old wood.

The two of you look at the mark humming thoughtfully.

"I could get more blood into it but then it probably wouldn't be able to fly, I've got bigger mozzies as well. Ready for a test?" You give a long suffering sigh before rolling up your sleeve for another half dozen insects to line themselves up on your skin, a few of the mosquitoes are real monsters, easily five or six millimeters from nose to arse while some of the others are much smaller. They drink their fill quickly, you can spot which ones are overfull easily, they're twice as large as they have any right to be and while the merely full ones take off drunkenly the others can't do much more than walk slowly across your skin. Abdomen crimson with stolen blood and taylor looking at her little soldiers with a stare of intense disapproval..

"They'd be good for storing blood at least, you could have other bugs carry them round to where they're needed.'

"Yeah… Yeah!" A moment later a fly swoops in and grabs one of the medium sized ones before taking off carefully, both insects wings beating furiously as they swerve drunkenly through the air. The largest mosquito sites there for a minute before a beetle carries it off without preamble. Taylor looks as pleased as punch and you find it hard to suppress a smile yourself.

"So where do you think we could find some test subjects?" You ask, Winslow is tentatively on the barrier between empire and ABB territory. the cops patrol this area relatively regularly and there's little enough viable revenue that it isn't a high priority for either of the gangs to properly move in. That it's both of their prime recruiting grounds and no one is really willing to rock the boat on that front. the threat of the empire gaining the other hand was one of the ways the school gave our threats the weight they did.

"Downtown maybe, I see a lot of thugs on my morning runs." Taylor responds.

"It is prime empire territory." you say, thinking. "But if I were the empire I wouldn't keep anything important that clost to PRT HQ, I'd do it a bit further into the suburbs. You could probably find some juicy stuff if you know what to look for." you watch as the beetle which stole the biggest mosquito puts its package down on the shelf and punches a hole in its payload, inch and a half big hole it leaves in the wood is encouraging.

-

Saturday Lunchtime.

You and Taylor pour over a print map while eating a kebab at a place near the docks. The two of you had managed to put together a bunch of tactics where taylor would seed somewhere with overfilled mosquitoes and have ants move old beer cans filled with blood into an area before rigging the place with tripwires other spidery shenanigans.

On the map before you you are marking out with a red pen some of your fathers various operation points, including but not limited to arms depots, drug stashes and even a few minor safehouses and distributions centers.

Taylor for her part has a blue pen and is jotting down notes on various points on the map, last night you told her what to look for, things which her bugs should be able to find without too much trouble and the kinds of things which the grapevine said the nazis are in to. From what she's telling you she's found one of their dog fighting rings, a chemist and a smaller arms depot well maybe not an arms depot but certainly an overly enthusiastic nazi collector. She wasn't in range for long enough to get a good read on the contents and bugs are utterly abysmal at the gunsmiths art.

The pair of you pour over the map while you munch on lunch, on the street a car pulls up to an abandoned and disgorges a bunch of skinheads so obviously up to no good that you can scarcely believe it.

"Tay, Nazis at two o clock." You mutter, The slender girl grunts in response, her mouth full of greasy takeaway.

You get a good look at the Nazimobile, its a fairly solid late 90s vehicle with a big boot. freshly polished and a spectacularly unsubtle paint job with somewhat more subtle nazi imagery plastered all over it.

"They've just grabbed a bag from the building the went to. It doesn't taste like drugs or money." she says. Before taking another bite and munching deliberately. "Guns, it's a bag of guns." She allows a small smile creep onto her face.

"Well, that won't do will it." You say, digging back into your own meal.

-  
Jimmy the Gopher wasn't a big man in the empire hierarchy. he wasn't a fighter, though he could fight. He wasn't a dealer, though he could deal and he certainly wasn't one to get involved in all that cape shit though that cape shit certainly loved to get involved with him. What he was was a gopher, whenever someone in the empire would need something Jimmy would be the one they sent. it wasn't a glamorous job but he got his share of respect for his duties, by and large a lot of the chucklefucks which Jimmy called "Brothers" didn't have the sense which god gave rats and Jimmy, to the nazi on the street, did.

Being one of the few sensible nazis in the city had led to Jimmy being trusted by the higher ups for important shit. Important shit like grabbing one of the docks gun stashes and getting the iron to somewhere more useful when that dragon fucker and his boys inevitably made their next push against the actual productive sections of brockton bay. If the empire was to hold the line against the asian freaks they'd need guns in convenient locations for the inevitable gang war which Victor thought was coming.

The heavy bag hangs by his side as he moves with purpose back up the alley, one of his boys lugs another similar bag while the two others take the point and rear guard. the formation is solid and the chances of someone interfering with the job is minimal.

Well he thought it was right up until he feels the belt on his jeans go slack and the strap on the bag slide out of his hands.

Sam up front eats pavement because he isn't paying attention as the sides of his pants disintegrate in a burst of bloody burgandy liquid and his jeans drop to his ankles. Tighty whiteys springing off simultaneously to give you a most unwelcome view of his nether regions.

"Cape!" someone shouts and the four of you shuffle at top speed towards the Gophermobile, bits flapping in the air and dragging the bags of loot at top speed to the car.

"Fuckin capes. Everyone in the fuckkin car. Dont worry about the boot just get in the fuckkin car." Sam manages to get the doors unlocked just in time for the rest of you to barrel out of the alley and scramble into the car with a minimal amount of shocked bystanders at your less than appropriate apparel.

"Sam get us the fuck out of here before we get any more of this crap on us." The engine turns over and purrs like a content tiger as sam goes to pull away from the curb.

The sound of all four tires giving out simultaneously is almost expected by Jimmy, why settle for pantsing his crew when you can strand them as well. His lads aren't quite so on the ball.

"Fukin Fucks, they got the tyres as well." Frank, the packmule of you group shouts in the too small confines of the car.

"Yes frank they got the tyres." Jimmy mutters.

"Fuck, Fuck, Fuck what do we do?" Sam mutters as Fred pulls a phone out of his still intact pockets and dials back to base, they need if not reinforcements at least someone to pick them up and get the out of here. At least someone's smart enough to call for help, Jimmy has just enough time to notice a mosquito closing at high speed before the back of the phone does up in a glob of red and starts smoking.

"Fuck, they're using insects. Boys, grab your shit, we're getting out of here on foot." the boys look confused at each other.

"Jimmy. The empire doesn't run from nuttin." Frank states with adorable finality.

"Franky boy, there's a cape out there which has decided to ambush us. We run. Unless you think that you'll be able to take down an enemy cape with you cock flopping everywhere we can't handle this shit. Grab the guns and prepare to run." Jimmy snaps at the muscle.

"Boss, there's somthing on your shoulder." Sam informs him, you swivel your head slowly to find a obscenely large mosquito bulbous abdomen swollen with crimson sitting on your shoulder giving you the stinkeye.

-

You try not to grin to broadly as four tattood arses flee up the street, their pants around their ankles and jackets melting of their spotty white frames as they do their best to leg it.

The nazis tried to escape with their guns but Taylor did a number on those bags they had, escaping with all of those guns appeared to not be in the cards today. A scattering of rifles, shotguns and a multitude of handguns are left up the street where the shuffling skinheads attempted to make their escape. they managed to escape with at least one weapon each but taking the videos of nearly naked nazis which should be appearing on youtube within the next couple of hours that minor win would be like pissing on a bonfire.

Taylor isn't quite as restrained, giggling herself into a fit around the corner as police cars roar past to secure the scene.

"Well Tay, gotta say that the most entertaining thing I've ever seen a the nazis do." She doesn't respond as you direct her to start walking in the opposite direction. A few seconds later she straightens up and starts walking with a bit more purpose.

"One of them managed to get a call out, they just jumped into a car about a block and a half away." she grins viciously.

"That's still inside your range isn't it?" You ask.

You hear a faint bang from the indicated direction and feel a few bits of power fall into your reserves.

"Mayyyyybe." Taylor admits with a grin.

"Just make sure you get their pants while you're at it. Nazis are much less threatening with their pants around their ankles." You chuckle.

She gives a wry smile as you hear a second cluster of tyres popping.

-

total BU gain 25 Pts,

Locations Discovered.

ABB - none

E88 - Dog ring, Small Arms Depot, Drug Chemist.

Merchants - Squealers Workshop, 2x Distribution center, 8x Supply Stashes, 4x Safehouses.

Basic Trapping Tactics learnt: You and Taylor can team up to rig a location with blood traps without ever setting foot in the location.


	10. 204 It's Not Called a Lair

[X] Store some blood in sealed containers and insects for Taylor to use later  
[X] Start discussing making a base of operations (you aren't calling it "a lair") with Taylor. An abandoned building is good for now, but you need something more long-term and secure.  
-[X] How many burrowing insects would Taylor need to start making some sort of hidden base?  
[X] Discuss the potential of scaling powers with Taylor. How does she feel about being a tinker and would she be willing to help you with said power?  
[X]Plan the fighting ring attack.

"You know we should get a lair. A proper lair with supersuits, enough space for my bugs and a big pool for you to keep blood in." Taylor chirrups.

Happy with your progress over lunch (and the rapidly expanding crime scene) the pair of you are legging it back to the old abandoned house near the school where you were doing your testing during the week and taylor is keeping one of her insect colonies. You had some more testing to do and needed to hash out a plan of what to do next.

"Taylor, We aren't going to call it a lair. I mean who calls their headquarters a lair? we need something more classy more secure. Somthing that doesn't give people the impression that there's going to be spider the size of a buick running around waiting to pounce on them if they're going about their buiness."

"Lair doesn't give off that impression does it?" Taylor asks. "besides I don't have any spiders the size of buicks so they'll just have o settle for thousands of normal size spiders." You attempt unsuccessfully to suppress a shudder at the thought while the girl gives you a wicked grin.

"Actually about that. I've been doing a bit more thinking and I think I've found a way to get around that whole gifted powers are weaker problem." you say casually.

"Really? How?" She asks.

"Well I can tie powers to other elements which thematically match the power. Remember that Charles Atlas one I told you about?" The girl nods, "Well it basically gives me a bonus in an area which is thematically appropriate to the skills I have. I learn how to Kung fu, I get stronger, Maths, I get smarter and so on."

"And?" She prompts.

"Well how many bugs are you controlling right now?"

"Two hundred and fifty eight million, seven hundred and three thousand, two hundred and ninety four… ish"

"A metric fucktonne, and you're getting the senses of them all and could control each of them individually if you need to."

"Uh huh."

"Well my power tells me that if I tie a power to the amount of actions you are capable of at once or the amount of senses you have. I'm pretty sure it'd scale logarithmically and at about a million or so bugs you'd be level with one of my normal powers, with as many bugs as you have right now you'd be quite a bit more powerful."

"But only thematically appropriate." she asks.

"Yeah, thinker or tinker powers maybe. I've got an idea for a power which would let me steal the genetics of what I eat, combine it with RGE and healing and I could you know get venomous claws steal the electric eel powers or grow giant wings and stuff. If you get a biotinker for bugs or something which lets you change their DNA then I could copy the modifications onto myself."

"And I'd get an army of tinkerbugs." She says.

"That's about the long and the short of it." You shrug.

"What about Nilbog?"

Urrm, yeah, Nilbog. anything which even looks like a nilbog is going to have the PRT all over it because the green fucker accidentally Ellisburg. The whole city gone, just like that.

"Fuck. Yeah." You run your hand over your short fuzzy hair. "Fuck. Nilbog. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." you say, and the conversation dies down ass the two of you leg it the rest of the way.

"How about a super detective power, the more I can see the better my deductions until everyone in the room is stunned at what I know." Taylor says as the pair of you head around the back of the house.

You run the suggestion through your thinker power and it comes out as good.

"It'll work better the more information you have from more sources, with the sensory power it'll be pretty bullshit."

Taylor smiles happily to as the back door opens by itself, hundreds of spiders pulling a silk line facilitating laziness on Taylors part. You walk in to find that the spiders here are working on a pair of spidersilk gloves, suspended off the ground on nearly invisible silk lines. other spiders, ones you pretend to not notice seal up the door behind you with silk, a normal guy wouldn't be able to get it open but you could in less than a minute and Taylor would just have the spiders cut the silk on her behalf.

"We still need to figure out what we can do for a permanent base. This place is decent enough for now but we could really do for somewhere with space to work and somewhere for you to keep your hives."

"Yeah, theres a couple of places we could get for a proper lair. An old abandoned warehouse would be good, there's a lot of them around the docks from the shipping years and they've got plenty of space for bugs or tinkering. but they're not really secret and any outside bugs will give us away."

"True, we could probably get one legitimately using hero identities if we register with the PRT but if we do that then everyone will know where it is pretty quickly." Taylor quirks an eyebrow at you.

"There are lots of moles in the PRT and police, shitloads of them. For the right price it's easy enough to get most information. The location of a base of independent heroes wouldn't even be that hard. On the plus side of course we get to loot any money we can appropriate which is "proceeds of crime", if we hit a counting or distribution centre that's where the gangs usually keep any money they've gathered for payday. With your powers that's easy money providing we can get past the capes."

"Attacking a gang distribution centre is easy money?" You could almost cut her skepticism with a knife.

"Welll… It usually goes like this. Every month or so a gang, like the merchants or ABB has to pay their goons and put together enough money for a shipment of "Product" whatever the shit is they're moving through the city. When they do that they usually use one of their bigger warehouses, pack it to the brim with mooks and guns and have a moderate amounts of their capes there to oversee things."

"And that makes this easier?" She asks.

"Normally no, but in our case, kinda, sorta yes. The PRT doesn't hit up these kinds of things because the gangs are usually packing a shitload of heat and their capes are powerful enough to deter the heroes because of massive collateral damage. But. We have a remote control non lethal weapon which pretty much removes the mooks from the equation completely non lethally, unless they feel like rocking out with their cock out, it's also pretty effective against most capes as well. Perhaps half a dozen in town could get away with fighting naked. We have a building full of mooks who can't fight properly because they don't have any clothes, they can't run because their cars have flat tires, and they can't get out with their money or the drugs. We call up the PRT for the party beforehand, set off the fireworks and claim our share of the loot when the dust has settled. The best part is that we could be eating a burger two blocks away while the whole thing is going down, safe as houses."

"Orrr, of course we could hit them before the process really starts and just do a hit and run. You drop a load of bugs on them while I loot the safe and book it before the capes get there."

"So money…"

"Isn't much of a problem, not until the gangs are actively preparing for us. Our real problem would be if they find us and hit us when we aren't ready for them. but your power is long ranged and I'm pretty much immortal."

"How do you know all this?"

"Dad's a merchant, you kind of pick this stuff up." You shrug.

"So buying somthing legitimately isn't a good idea. our other option is that we could just squat in an abandoned building or warehouse." toylor remarks.

"Like we are now." You interject.

"Or we get someone to buy it for us."

"Like your dad." She scowls at you.

"I haven't even told dad about my powers yet." She mutters.

"I haven't told my dad either but that's because dad's a raging fuckwit and a merchant. I'm not entirely sure which part is worse." Taylor quirks an eyebrow at you.

"Your dad on the other hand seem like a nice guy plus he's got like a couple hundred big burly headkickers on call. Where are you making your costume anyway, is it somewhere that he might accidentally find?"

"The basement." She admits sheepishly.

"Fuck. Taylor." you groan into both your hands, sometimes a single facepalm just won't do the trick.

"I know, I know, I know." she mutters. "Change of subject, Who should be our next customers?"

"Dog fighting ring, lots of nazis, not much chance of capes, if we go overboard on the blood we won't end up destroying the evidence and because we won't be looking for loot there isn't an reason for us to be within two blocks of the place." You say.

Taylor looks thoughtful, considering the other choices. "What about the chemists or arms depots. we could disable them easily and there isn't much to loot in those places."

"Dogfights, or casinos and such are where the gangs go to relax. Plus there's a lot of mooks in places like that, much more then there'd be at their operation and whey won't be prepared for a fight we should be able to pretty easily get the drop on them." You respond.

"Okey. well here's what I know about the place from when I looked."

A trail of ants crawl across the floor to make a map.

Operation Planning.

The target is formerly vacant residential building to the north east of Taylors house, the windows and doors have been boarded up some time ago and a slab of concrete remains where the front yard used to stand. Nazis park their cars there now.

There is a large living room out the back of the house which has been converted into the fighting ring, theres enough space to easily fit a hundred men comfortably alongside the ring and the dogs.

Of the four bedrooms (three upstairs and one downstairs) the upstairs ones have been converted into holding pens where unfortunate animals await their fate, the area is full of bugs and there are holes in the walls and ceiling where overly enthusiastic/drunk/stoned Nazis misbehaved. The downstairs bedroom has been converted into a bar, throughout the house there are multiple empty beer cans and bottles secreted in nooks and crannies. she reports that quite a few seem like they have been there for some time.

There are two toilets, both have seen regular use and irregular cleaning.

There are several other abandoned buildings within Taylors range of the place and even a small collection of shops and restaurants due to be open at that time of night.

Taylor reported that there was no one onsite this morning when she passed the building and that it seemed like no one had been there since Thursday. Checking Stormfront you find that there's a meet this sunday night from eight to midnight, Cricket and Stormtiger are expected to be in attendance.

* * *

GM Note: this being the transcript you can't actually vote but I'm putting the options here anyway. the selected option will be in the header of the next chapter.

* * *

You have a choice of options.

Command.  
[] An abandoned building (close).  
Enables you to personally intercede if it becomes necessary.  
[] An abandoned building (far).  
Allows you to freely discuss operations, safest option.  
[] Over Dinner.  
Makes it difficult to freely discuss the operation but removes suspicion.

Setup.  
[] break and enter. enter the property during the day to prepare the battlefield

guided burglary via bugs let you make the most of things. might get caught by neighbours, robbing you of element of surprise

[] Tubs of blood. (fill cans and bottles full of blood for onsite traps).

++ to preparation, small chance of getting found while trapping. moderate chance of getting found before ready.\

[] weakened supports, weaken structural elements around the site.

\+ to preparation, moderate chance of getting found before ready.

[] ceiling funtimes. Place tubs of blood in the ceiling cavity.

++ to preparation, higher chance of getting discovered while placing traps, no chance of getting discovered before ready.

Insectoid invasion. (choose one)  
[] pre place insects for the ambush

[] Hot rig the location while victims are on site. less chance of victims tripping trap before you're ready, more chance of them noticing the bugs.

[] pre rig the location with tripwires. less chance of noticing bugs, more chance of tripping traps before time.

[] Swarm invasion, swarm location at correct time. No chance of bugs being noticed, significant chance of underutilisation of resources and cape interference.


	11. Heroic Biotinker: By Mr Cogmor

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 **Topic: Response to a heroic Nilbog  
In: Boards ► What If ► Misc**

 **EidolonFangirl92** (Original Poster)  
Posted on April 4, 2011:

What do you think the response would be to someone with Nilbogs powers acting as an independent hero? What if they used their powers to fight villains (without going overboard), used his creations to help local economy and to cure people. What would be the reaction from the public and the PRT?

 **(Showing Page 1 of 2)**

 **► LunarLynx**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
I don't think it would be possible for a heroic Nilbog to exist. All of his creations were self-replicating and creating self-replicating organisms is a crime

 **► CookieCutter**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
That's assuming Nilbog couldn't create sterile creations, as far as we know he just didn't choose to.

 **► LoneWoodsman** (Verified PRT Agent)  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
The public response would depend a lot on the image that the cape promotes of themselves. If they make cute attractive creations instead of inhuman monsters, are shown to be actively helping and don't create replicating organisms then they should be fine. Of course you need to compromise between appearance and practicality. Cute furry kitten like creations are naturally going to appeal to people but they are also much less durable than something with an armored hide, and of course if the public notices you using cute creatures as disposable fodder they will be up in arms so the cape would have to limit themselves for good PR.

 **► Tarzan**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
It's entirely possible to be a hero with "ugly" powers. I remember Malady. She was a hero further south, a biotinker who could create diseases. She was under some scrutiny but none of her diseases were infectious once contracted and cleared up on their own eventually. I remember hearing that she would inoculate herself and her teammates before storming the villains with infectious gas. Was very effective that way, doesn't matter how strong a brute you are if you spend your time coughing your lungs out.

 **► ManInBlue**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
They wouldn't keep their freedom very long. The real reason biotinkers are so rare is that the military finds them and gives them an offer they can't refuse. Malady herself vanished a few years ago. Imagine how useful she would be in a bio-warfare campaign. Organism biotinkers work together to prepare an army of crafted soldiers as a last resort against military attack. The CUI likely has their own contingencies in place.

 **► Tarzan**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
She wasn't kidnapped by the military. Malady left the Protectorate to join Toybox because she became convinced that she would do more good by getting rich and donating the money to a worthy cause then going out and fighting crime.

 **► ManInBlue**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
Or is that what they want you to think?

 **► LucklessDuck**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
Tarzan  
How in the world does she make money by selling people diseases?

 **► Tarzan**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
She can make her diseases have custom effects, incubation times and duration. She can make people delirious or create a mild allergic reaction to something that makes the sufferer high. Some of her diseases can also be used to lose weight, alter sleeping schedules and other effects. They are also surprisingly affordable when compared to other similar options

 **► CogitoErgoSum**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
There's an idea, The biotinker could join Toybox and sell custom pets and animal breeds to donate to charity. If they get popular / well known enough they might even be able to legally create new kinds of live stock that can breed (with human assistance of course, doesn't hurt to be safe)

 **End of Page. 1,** **2**

 **(Showing Page 2 of 2)**

 **► SkywardSight**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
CogitoErgoSum

Biological Tinkers are an abomination. God created life on earth for us to appreciate naturally. Not for people to inspire people to create twisted mockeries of the Lord's work

 **► Flora** (Verified Cape)  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
SkywardSight  
Who are you to say what God does or doesn't allow. I believe I was given my gift for a reason and If I can use it to help people I will and to hell with your overzealous evangelism.

 **► Tin_Mother** (Moderator)  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
SkywardSight Flora  
A reminder to stay on topic please

 **► WishingWell**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
I hate biological tinkers. What gives them the right to create life only to force their creations to work as slaves and engage in life or death fights with other parahumans. It's not just amoral, it's inhuman to treat your children that way.

 **► MrMacaw**  
Replied on April 4, 2011:  
WishingWell  
On the contrary, it is in fact very human. The same right that allows us to use biological tinkertech creations with impunity is the same right that allows us to raise, care for and finally lead to the slaughterhouse, cattle and other forms of livestock. Animals are simply worth less than humans. They aren't children they are beasts and they are treated as such


	12. 205 Nudie Nazi Party

[X] Over Dinner.  
-[X] Since it's your idea, it's your treat. And maybe tease Taylor about it being a date? Nothing too overt, though, and nothing that would give blackmail material to Taylor's bullies if they discovered this outing  
-[X] Prearrange codes for various contingencies, such as capes present on the scene, both villanious and heroic, people fleeing, etc.  
[X] break and enter. enter the property during the day to prepare the battlefield  
-[X] Taylor on the lookout; first to check if there's anyone in the house, then to check if anyone is coming close to the house (she'll either spell messages to you with bugs, if she can, or just bite you in pre-arranged places).  
-[X] weakened supports, weaken structural elements around the site.  
-[X] Toilet disasters. Hide containers of blood in toilet tanks  
-[X] Hide insects there too  
[X] insectoid invasion. (choose one)  
[X] pre place insects for the ambush  
-[X] Hot rig the location while victims are on site. less chance of victims tripping trap before you're ready, more chance of them noticing the bugs.  
[X]PRT  
-[X] Before Event.  
[X] police,  
-[X] during event.

* * *

GM Note: Remember folks that this is a quest and not a proper fic. The extra options which have appeared in the vote have come from the readers with write-ins.

* * *

You whistle happily as you walk down the street on the overcast sunday morning you had work at the restaurant last night but got up early anyway.

Taylor is jogging down the street from the other direction, maintaining a good clip as she presses a sheet of paper into your hand as she passes.

You unfold it and see its divided up into a grid with different words in each point. Three beetles crawl out and skitter over to their boxes.

"48 Henly st"

"empty"

"Back Door"

Clever. you fold up the sheet carefully to not crush any of Taylors helpers and resume your thuggish walk down the street. You find the house easily enough, taped up windows with old beer cans under any cover. conveniently messy you think as you walk through the gate at the side of the house, one which has been helpfully webbed open, you wouldn't want any onlookers thinking that you didn't belong here after all.

You try the back door to find it locked and the broken windows boarded up. unfolding the paper the bugs scurry.

"No Key"

"Fuck" You mutter. Eyeing the window nearest the door a thought occurs to you.

You put your hand against the board and give it a gentle push, slowly the nails holding it in give way and you force your hand inside, a bit of speculative reaching later and you manage to grab the internal handle and open the door. Easy.

When you step inside there are bugs everywhere, the ceiling is a crawling mass of creepy crawlies and flies carpet the walls. You manage to suppress a shudder at what Taylor's capable of while pressing the board back into place.

First order of business, Structural sabotage. You sneak around the house running a blood stained finger on the underside of a lot of their furnature and fixtures. the blood eats away at the cheap wood while leaving the veneer largely intact the Taylor will fill the cavities with mosquitos as when the time is right. Doors, window sills, tables and the very ring itself get hollowed out this way and filled with bugs.

Step two, special delivery. Tayor has shitloads of empty bottles and cans from around the house lined up on the kitchen counter, hundreds of ants under each one maneuvering it into place or in some cases being airlifted by teams of beetles with silk cables. You pull a can of expanding foam from your bag and start filling each container with blood then sealing it with the foam. by the time you reach the end of a line of containers Taylor has had a team of black widows abseil from the ceiling and pass them off to the beetle lifting teams.

Fuck that's creepy, hundreds of spiders pulling off a synchronised abseil. Goddamn. You're glad she's on your side.

Part three, the Toilets of Doom. The toilets in this place are relatively simple affairs, you lift the ceramic lid of the cistern and…. fuck o fuck o fuck o fuck… try not to drop it as hundreds of spiders look at you from the underside of the lid. You put it down carefully and lower in some wine bottles, lids plugged with expanding foam and a single spider locked on the inside ready to dissolve the plug at the slightest prompting. Whichever poor sod feels like taking a leak at the wrong time is going to be in for the shock of his life.

Part four. Mosquito Junction, aka Blake is for Dinner. Filling mosquitos outside and shipping them in isn't going to be the greatest idea especially since it'll tie you up for the rest of the day instead you pull off your shirt and take a seat in the centre of the rink and wait as hundreds of mosquitos line themselves up on your back and tank up. Most of them just till themselves to a reasonable maximum, full enough to still maneuver at a reasonable speed but the largest turn themselves into mobile blood tankers.

Half an hour later you shrug your clothes back on over a bug bitten back. Goddamn it is itchy, you can't get sacrificial healing too soon. You walk out the back door and lock it as you go.

A small army of ants have their own collection of tins in front of you and you oblige them before easing your way out the gate and heading off down the road, just another hoodied thug heading off to work on a cold sunday morning.

* * *

Taylor.

"Where are you off to kiddo?" She hears as she's halfway out the door.

"Just meeting Blake to figure out this whole school thing before heading back tomorrow."

"Uh huh." Danny, gives her a dry gaze over his paperwork on the table, "And this involves meeting a helpful young man late on a sunday evening because?" He fixes her with parental gaze number 4, the "I know that you know that I know."

"I… Just… I'm…" Taylor mutters as her cheeks heat up.

'Hehehehe… You're so easy to fluster Kiddo. Grab a twenty from my wallet there's a new Johnny Depp movie from Alph opening it's meant to be fun. Just remember that if he gets to handsy you have that can of mace. Okey Kiddo." the big man gets up from his seat and passes her his wallet.

"Dad. It's not that." Taylor protests lamely, cheeks heating even further.

"Well you've been the happiest these few days that i've seen you in months Taylor. Just remember to take care of yourself." He kisses her on the forehead.

"You're horrible dad." she mutters under her breath.

"Just doing my job Kiddo. Now get going." He pushes her out the door despite her sputtering protests.

* * *

Blake

"Hey Taylor, ready for our date?" You ask all chipper as you meet the girl outside the restaurant you work at.

"Oh god. Not you to." She mutters.

"Not me too?"

"My dad thinks we're dating."

"Because being an undercover superhero team is so much more likely." You quip and she gives you a stinkeye of biblical proportions.

"Come on it's a bit of a walk and the show starts in half an hour." You say leading the way.

The restaurant you're having dinner in isn't a classy affair and restaurant is probably a bit of a strong word for the services it offers. It's closer to a takeaway shop with a ratty old colour TV and a bunch of tables in the back where old men can usually be found drinking coffee and playing chess. the atmosphere is distinctly east european and as such inhabited by untermensch. Not as untermensch as you of course but more than enough that they aren't party to the "Empire's Great Plan For America". There's little love lost.

You order your meals and spread out a bunch of notes on the tale between you, most of it is actually schoolwork which both of you need to catch up on anyway, but some of them have keywords so you do'nt have to actually talk about hero stuff at the table.

As you are halfway before you finish your meal Taylor gives you the signal and you head off to make a fateful phone call.

"Hello, Brockton Bay PRT how can I help you?"

"Hi, I'd like to report an Empire 88 dog fighting ring up in the the northern suburbs."

"Could you give me an address?"

"Yeah it's at 48 Henly Street, an abandoned house with a concrete slab instead of a front yard."

"Thankyou for your help, I am obliged to ask how you came across this information."

"Independent hero. I noticed it on my run this morning, the nazis should have just started the event and me and my partner are about to hit it."

"I'm obliged to warn you that the Empire is armed and dangerous, confronting them will likely result in a significant chance of loss of life."

"Nahhh, I think I'll take my chances. Anyhooo. My powers are good for non lethal incapacitation so if you have some of your guys wait round the corner at say, fifteen Bruce, all they'll need to do is pick up the nazis trying to escape. Look for the guys without clothes on."

You hear a long suffering sigh from the other end of the line "There should be forces on site in fifteen minutes, will we be able to contact you on this phone."

"Nah, I'll turn it off after I hang up, there will be a communication device in the letterbox of fifteen bruce though, just make sure you bring enough wagons for about eighty Nazis. Have a nice Day."

You hang the phone up and head inside to finish your meal.

* * *

Jimmy the Gopher

Jimmy's day was significantly better than yesterday. not getting paraded around the early spring streets with your cock flopping out is a distinct improvement on it actually happening. Unfortunately the Gopher-mobile had been towed and all of the guns were confiscated by the fuzz. Today he was stuck driving his wife's car, a little dinky town vehicle and was wanted on suspicion of having a spare tire full of pot if he was really unlucky and the coppers had taken the time to actually search the car for drugs. His mate barry on the force is running interference for him though and if he's lucky the appropriate paperwork will be misplaced so that he can get his car back at some point.

A problem for tomorrow he decided as he sipped his beer, he didn't have any dogs in today's festivities but a good fight always lets a man take his mind off a weeks fuckups.

*grummmble*

Ah, it's that time again he thinks as he watches a fight come to an end. the winning dog going for the jugular of the street stray they brought in to give it a warm up.

*Burp* Jimmy puts his bottle down before lumbering off in search of the loo.

He manages to find a crapper upstairs, one of the cleaner ones compared to some he's used in the past, he drops his pants and drops himself on the toilet seat to unload the load.

Sitting there with his eyes crossed, squeezing out the log of logs Jimmy turns his gaze to the ceiling to notice a mess of cobwebs, little spidery eyes peering out from behind their silken homes.

"Waitaaminnit." Jimmy snaps it off and takes a closer look at the room. Spiders on the roof, nothing at eye level, he leans around to get a look under the U bend of the toilet and finds a it covered in beetles.

*gulp*

Jimmy isn't a smart man, not by any measure but nor is he a dumb man and in a world of capes one quickly learns to be a master of the art of pattern recognition if one wants to keep their pants. When jimmy finds a single solitary mosquito, abdomen swollen with crimson blood, sitting on atop the porcelain lid of the cistern giving him a very familiar stare he knows his fate is sealed.

Unless.

Unless.

He stands up straight. No pressure. Wipes up. No pressure. Washes hands. No pressure. And comfortably ambles his way down the stairs and to the front door where he turns the deadbolt and gives it a good solid push.

Nothing.

Ahhh. The doorjam has been sown shut by spidersilk, a black widow is waving to him from the top of the doorjam.

Not good.

He turns, the back door is open.

'Hey gopher, Whatchu doing. the next fight is about to start." Cricket shouts across the din of the fight.

A Black widow abseils down from the ceiling in front of Jimmy.

"Ahhhh, Cricket. We've got a problem." he says nervously, another three widows have descended from the ceiling.

"What kind of problem gopher?", She shifts her seat and Jimmy can see the beer can underneath it topple over in slow motion.

"A bug…." Crimson fluid flows from the can, along the carpet, up her leg and over her shirt. There's a scream of abject horror from the toilet as another flow of crimson liquid seeps out from under the door and a slight tinkle of a hundred cans and bottles being pushed over around the house. "Problem."

* * *

Velocity was the first one on site, as was his prerogative, he sped to the corner and looked down the street. Station wagons with bumper stickes were the vehicle of the night. Fishing his binoculars out of a pouch reveals cages in the back of said vehicles and a wide variety of racist slogans affixed to the stickers such as the "American Society for Race Protection" ,"niggers go home" and some even less subtle.

"Console, it looks like the information is on the money. Lots of animal transport vehicles with bumperstickers."

"Copy that Velocity, contact says communication device in letterbox of fifteen Bruce."

Velocity raises and eyebrow and speeds over to the described location, popping the lid off the letterbox and fishing out a sheet of folded paper.

"Console there's just a sheet of paper here, its got a bunch of squares with names in it and, and, and… Oh, that's clever. Console be advised that Independant hero is a bug controller, they're using bugs to talk to me. current message is 'Wait.' 'prepare' 'trap' 'naked' 'nazis'. I repeat Wait, Prepare, Trap, Naked, Nazis. what's the ETA on containment?"

"Copy that, ETA in five. Keep us posted."

"The message has changed. Cricket and Stormtiger are onsite."

"Noted."

Velocity waited for the necessary five minutes deep in the shade near near a fence down the street, no need to give the nazis any warning of the raid.

He was eventually pulled out of his nazi watching by the faint electric hum of Armsmasters tinkercycle coming to a halt behind him. Ehe armoured hero efficiently dismounting and striding over to his colleague.

"How does it look?"

"Definitely nazis and almost certainly the dog fights. Here."

Velocity passes over the piece of paper, and Armsmaster gives him one of his signature frowns.

"Turns out our independent hero is a Bug controller, thats why they were so flippant about the danger. The same one responsible for taking care of those minions yesterday." Velocity turns back to his binoculars.

"They still got away." Armsmaster grumped.

"Yeah but imagine taking the empire seriously after that." he chuckled. "From the looks of things we're in for a repeat performance tonight." He smiles under his mask, ready for action.

"Hrmmm. Get ready for action. Battery. Ten seconds to start, on my mark"

Velocity waited, counting down the seconds in agonising slowness and anticipating action until a shrill scream of abject horror echoes out over the street..

"Mark."

Velocity sped down the street at near his maximum speed, closing with the cars outside the decrepit house and speeding between the and through the gate. he didn't even notice the thin line of spider silk until he feels the tension against his leg and the lurch as an old beer tin full of liquid gets yoinked off the ground and impacts his leg.

He gets a good look in the room, it's full of dogs nazis and a red fluid rapidly spreading across the floor.

Note to self, Don't touch the fluid.

He watched as the fluid began to crawl up their pants covering them in a thin crimson layer. Cricket the skinny nazi bitch was already turning to look at him and her fellow pit fighter Stormtiger stood on the far side of the room, a small tin of the stuff toppling from a shelf onto his head. having done his normal scouting Velocity was gone barely a second after he arrives, a moment later he's out on the street with battery and her fraction of the PRT Troopers.

"Velocity to console, Sighted sixty Nazis on the ground floor. Cricket and Stormtiger in attendance Independant capes have deployed an unknown chemical agent to the battlefield, all suspects affected. unknown effect. It's a dog fighting ring, there were several animal corpses out back."

"We copy" Velocity smiled, indepenants who can follow through on their promises and provide a good fight. Brilliant. A chirrup came through on his personal line.

"Velocity here."

"Hey flash, I think I've figured out what that bio-agent does." Battery almost giggled over his com.

"How'd you figure that?"

"Look down Robin, are you sure you were watching where you walking?"

Velocity, Robin as he is know to his friends looks down at himself and…

That's why it felt breezy.

* * *

Taylor smirks as she bit into her east european hamburger, relish and pickles nearly squirting out the side.

You raise an eyebrow at the young woman while digging into you own souvlaki.

"Velocity hit one of the tripwires." she whispers between mouthfulls.

"And the rest of them?"

Taylor smiles like a guilty cat as she wipes a bit of sauce from her cheek.

"Ah… Should we get the ice cream?"

"I think we should."

A lump of Bu ticks over and fills your reserves from halfway to full and almost another entire power at once.

* * *

Caper Complete.  
Nudie Nazi Party.

75 (caper) + 40 (omake) + 10 (velocity rolls 4 on a D100)

Total haul. 125 Bu

net Bu 66 + 125 = 191.

Choose a Power Now.

Relationship Upgrade.

Taylor Hebert : Friend.

Danny Hebert : Aquantaince, Like.

Encounter Rolls Coming Up.


	13. 301 Tha Rules As We See Em

[X] Discuss cape names with Taylor.  
-[X] Listen to Taylor's suggestions for you. Propose and discuss merits of: Factotum, The Fool  
-[X] Propose names for Taylor: Imago  
-[x] Once the names are decided on, register on PHO and obtain confirmed cape status. Taylor could spell her cape name with bugs, and you could do a suggestive dance using your blood to dissolve your clothes (but not underwear, you don't want to get banned on your first day).  
-[X] As Taylor's costume isn't ready, she could do the spelling from outside the camera's view if she wants to and if it's allowed

[X] Discuss unwritten rules as they are known  
-[X] How binding they are and consequences of breaking them (not very, and depending on what and how you do)  
-[X] Reason for their existence (Endbringers, villain vs. hero number disparity)  
-[X] General role of PR in the life of parahumans in general and our in particular

[X] Check what books and things you would require to obtain for Arcadia that you could deal without in Winslow.  
-[X] As soon as you see first paperwork, go with Taylor to buy those things. Be absolutely sure to use legally obtained money.  
[X] Think of how to prevent Arcadia from contacting your father.

[X] Consider bending some steel face masks for Taylor and us. (so if we get blood on ourselves and Taylor we do not get outed)  
-[X] Also, some to give to people to prevent outing when we strip them.

[X] In anticipation of getting RGE and getting our combat form, think of what form to take and what features it should have  
-[X] Discuss "Hitler plan" with Taylor

* * *

Power get! remaining Bu = 91 Pts.

Sacrificial Healing:

May sacrifice bodymass to induce extremely rapid regeneration in desired location.

Mass of regeneration is equivalent to 1/10th of the calorific value of the mass consumed.

Is a actively focused ability, not active while unconscious or asleep.

Regeneration is equivalent to rapid Normal healing of the body, will not heal old wounds or anything which would not heal on its own in time, leaves small scars.

* * *

Cut lunch is not on the menu, not for you at least. Something about your family situation just makes the provision of proper food harder than it needs to be. all your father and his people have in the crappy drug den/apartment block which you call home is mountains of munchies and microwaveable meals. prodding at the flavourless lump of slop on you plate in front of you makes you wish wistfully for those nutritional disasters if only for the comfort value, you don't need to eat anymore and you don't ever get more than mildly peckish since you got Bloody Business either.

You push the plate of what could generously be described as food across the table while Taylor smirks from behind her leftovers sandwich, it looks like leftover roast chicken. you could seriously go some leftover roast chicken, you have honestly, truly, positively never had leftover roast dinner in your life.

"So what does the thread say?" she asks between mouthfulls.

"A bit of this and a bit of that. Its only been up since first period and we've already got a bunch of godbotherers preaching about god's prerogative and Flora telling them where to stick it."

"Flora? never heard of her."

"Same here, safe money says she's a plant tinker though. Anyhow the best response so far is from a PRT agent, 'f they make cute attractive creations instead of inhuman monsters, are shown to be actively helping and don't create replicating organisms then they should be fine. Of course you need to compromise between appearance and practicality. Cute furry kitten like creations are naturally going to appeal to people but they are also much less durable than something with an armored hide, and of course if the public notices you using cute creatures as disposable fodder they will be up in arms so the cape would have to limit themselves for good PR.' So, jumping spiders with raindrop hats is the answer to the problem."

"And in a fight?" Tayor says between mouthfuls.

"Venomous jumping spiders with raindrop hats orrrrr we trot out the less fuzzy specimens. I'll tell you right now everyone, especially tinkers, has contingency stockpiles they Pull out when the going gets tough." You say, scrolling down and reading a bunch of responses. You also take the time to look up Flora, a californian plant tinker, specializing in genetic manipulation and growth patterns. She's got a lot of contracts with the LA Protectorate, owns several farms and is in fact one of the major feedstock suppliers for a whole series of industrial and agricultural purposes. She fights using what is for all intents and purposes a Tree Mech, brute/shaker 4, the consensus is that you need hazchem gear and a bazooka to have a good go at taking her down because it sheds hyper allergens on command.

"Well Look who we have here." A snide voice speaks from above you.

"Huh." You grunt, looking up. Above you stands a tall blonde teenager, too skinny, not in the same way as taylor who's naturally bony but skinny in the same way as someone who's had chemical help. There's a reason for that.

"The runt speaks. Skiddy was wondering where you've been short stuff. Rumor is that you think you're too good for us now, seen you skiving off with this skinny bitch and I think he might have a point." She does her best to look down her nose and sneer at you but the effect is spoiled by her crooked teeth and shitty skin.

"And?" You sigh theatrically "Jess I'm fully aware of what my father thinks of my life decisions and how much he wouldn't approve. Do you have anything meaningful to tell me which isn't fucking obvious or are you just going to stand there all day?" You say, no bothering to stand up try to look her in the eye, she isn't quite as tall as Taylor but still way taller than you.

"Jus' sayin' my old man heard Skiddy whinin' about his bitch ass boy running around with some white bitch." She slurs loudly."No offence." Taylor hides behind her sandwich.

"And here I thought the nazis were the only hypocrites in town." You mutter. "Thanks Jess. Owe you one." You nod to the girl and she nods carefully back.

"Anyone asks we didn't have this talk shrimp." She jabs a finger at you before stalking away.

"Nice girl." Taylor mutters.

"You'd be surprised." You reply. Once, not too long ago you thought you had a thing for her but it never really amounted to anything but if she's sticking her neck out for you like this Dad must have had a proper blow up. He isn't one of the most reserved men in the city and you'd hoped he'd ignored the shit currently going on in your life, alas no.

"Skiddy?" She questions, raising an eyebrow at you.

"Dad… Dad, named himself after week old dirty undies along with his girlfriend the noisy sow and their muscle who is literally what you scrape up from the bottom of a bin." You admit sadly.

"Your father is Skidmark." She asks in disbelief, you nod sadly.

"Not through choice. How do you think I got my power? Tiddlywinks?" You snap, running your hand nervously through your hair. Taylor's frowning at you past the last few bites of her sandwich.

"Sorry Taylor. Just, Fuck…. Sorry." You apologise. "I'm the son of possibly the worst person in town, save maybe Kaiser or some shit. I didn't want to tell you because, well… Dad." You give a sort of sad smile which Taylor reflects with her wide expressive mouth.

"So names?" She proffers a change in subject.

"Names." You accept.

The two of you spend the rest of lunch tossing names back and forth. Taylor proposes Factotum which is apparently a DnD thing, the actual word means servant as wikipedia informs you but the roleplay version is a character that can do everything, just not anyone thing especially well and because of that they could switch from horribly broken combo to horribly broken combo.

Someone who isn't paying attention might get the wrong idea about your power and you like that idea, something which doesn't conform to people preconceptions is always handy. Definitely a step up from Skidmark.

Taylor however hasn't found one she likes, you suggested 'Imago' the final stage of an insect's life cycle as well as Monarch, Weaver and half a dozen others, she jots them down for further consideration.

You spend the rest of the school day attempting to study between trying to look up the things you need for Arcadia. Books, dress code, timetables etc. the two of you want to make a good impression once you arrive there's a list of the necessary gear on their website as well as course list which you quickly download. Just what you need.

"Tay, have you heard of the unwritten rules." School's ended and the two of you have managed to leave the crowds behind and are heading to the house where you have made your erstwhile lair.

"Sort of, it comes up on PHO a bit but I don't know the specifics." she replies.

"Well here's how it goes, capes don't escalate, not normally. That means no killing unless there's a kill order and no unmasking, even if you do know who a villain cape is you don't go after them if you spot them at the mall or something. It's poor form and more importantly you start that kinda shit no one knows where it'll end. You out Purity or force her to out herself as a civilian then all hell will break loose, the bitch is blaster eight she could probably level a pretty big chunk of downtown if she wanted. the same goes for Kaiser, Victor and pretty much everyone who still has a civilian identity. Most of the villains will break it if they think they can get away with it and there are always a bunch of capes where it doesn't really apply. The merchants don't really have civilian identities to protect, they hang around being kings of sandcastles hanging with the other junkies around their product. Lung and Hookwolf on the other hand just don't give a fuck, word is that Hooky's pretty recognizable in the flesh and Lung is a rage dragon, sit's in his territory like a dragon on a hoard and doesn't care who knows it. Dude can go toe to toe with an endbringer so no one starts shit with him. "

"That's the other point, Endbringers have everyone pull out the stops and when I say everyone I mean Everyone. Bet you right now that Armsy has a stockpile of goodies just waiting for field testing on an Endbringer and anyone who has a proper chance of beating them or even just holding the line gets treated softly softly by the PRT. That's why we've still got Lung running around, Miss Militia could have capped his ass years ago if she felt like it." Taylor looks at you aghast.

"Thats so unfair, what about the people the gangs hurt or the drugs that Lung or Kaiser sell. That the PRT lets them keep on doing it is... is... is…"

"Tay. if the PRT started shit, if they got the Triumvirate in for a weekend to take out the gangs what do you reckon would happen to the rest of the country? Gladly won't tell you this shit, the bastard is all about the wonders of the PRT or some shit but if legend pops up in a bunch of cities and frags the gangs then they'll start getting desperate. Tay tell me how much shit you could fuck up if you got desperate. just how much poison do those bugs of yours carry?"

"..." She doesn't reply.

"How much?"

"A gallonish." she admits sheepishly.

"Yeah, you could kill everyone in the school in the space of ten minutes and no one could stop you. Imagine if Alexandria was out for blood, how many hostages could you take to stop her getting at you?"

"I'd never…"

"But Kaiser would, Lung would, Dad would." You say emphasising the names.

"Then there's the Endbringers, a strong villain like Kaiser or Lung can put the hurt on an endbringer, really put the hurt on and maybe make them leave a minute, maybe more, earlier. How many people didn't die because Shitheads like them are around to hold them back."

"I…" she stutters over her word. "Heroes shouldn't do that the PRT doesn't just let this happen. I…"

"Yeah it's fucked up, the world is a pretty fucked up place, this city fucked up as all hell. We've just gotta deal with it. The PRT doesn't 'let' things happen but in practice they're just another gang, and they can't properly escalate because if they do then the gangs will escalate and then everyones' in deep shit. So everyone just plays the game, if someone gets beaten according to the rules well thems the breaks, if not then they might flip the board and burn the house down they might not, you never know, it's best not to find out."

The two of you finally reach the house and collapse into the old busted couches that you pulled from one of the other rooms and taylor has repaired with her spiders. she takes a moment to scream into her hands and just a bit of time to compose herself.

"What about the dog fight yesterday?"

"A gang event full of gang people where we used an indiscriminate nonlethal weapon as the opening salvo, they're collateral damage. We're cool, they'll be angry but sometimes that's just how powers work. We should probably see of we can get masks which won't dissolve by accident just in case."

"Yeah." She fidgets a bit. "So how's your new power?"

"Pretty cool, I healed from the mozzie bites pretty much instantly this morning and I feel really really good. all of my little niggling injuries and such are just gone. I might be able to take Ageis in a fist fight, probably not but maybe. Ohh and one other thing, Pull My Finger." you hold your hand out to the girl.

"Really Blake? pull your finger?" she rolls her eyes at you.

"Seriously." You wave your hand at her again and she gives you the driest look imaginable. You prod her on response.

*Sigh*

When she grabs your finger you trigger the sacrificial part of your power and your entire right hand drops to the floor where it writhes for a bit before going still. Taylor almost manages to keep her composure while you start cackling madly.

"You shitty bastard." she kicks you ineffectually. "You did that on purpose." she punctuates each word with a light kick.

"Ohhh… Oohhh… Ha Ha... Oh.. Your face, the look on your face just priceless." She gives you another kick for good measure.

"Ahhhhh, Okay I'm done." You manage before rolling upright.

"Your hand?" Taylor asks. you pick up the discarded appendage with your left hand and give her the still warm bit of flesh.

"Here, I always regen from my largest piece, this piece, find somewhere safe for it." You say while she examines the black hand carefully prodding and poking it to see if there's a sign of life in the detached lump of flesh.

"And the stump?" she asks. you hold said stump up to her and begin to burn your blood reserves, a couple of seconds later and you have a proper, fully functioning, hand again.

"Superpowers are bullshit yo." Taylor smirks at that.

The two of you spend the rest of the time before martial arts talking shit to each other and throwing around possible cape names with abandon. by the end of the day Taylor still hasn't chosen one but you made yourself a verified cape on PHO by nomming your cape name in blood on the concrete floor of the House.

An hour and a half later you find yourself trudging back into Merchant territory. Taylor wasn't that bad at martial arts for a noob, she clearly needed more training but having her there learning was a small way to pay her back for helping you get away from your father, that she promised to give any merchants car which comes to her neighbourhood a bad case of Bees puts you at ease. Dad might not know how to track down a bug controlling cape but tracking down Danny Hebert is as simple as opening a phone book.

You finally come into sight of the shitty apartment block you call "Home" it looks like your dad is alread up to his regular shit, he probably only got up a few hours ago. whatever you've dealt with his outbursts before, you can deal with this one. He probably doesn't even know that you're supposedly changing schools, not even the winslow rumor mill has cottoned on to that little fact.

How will you approach Skidmarks tantrum? choice might have serious consequences.

[] Sanguine.  
[] Aggressive.  
[] Cowardly.  
[] Snarkily.  
[] Other.


	14. 302 The Problem With Parents

[X] Sanguine, but faking cowardly reactions if needed.  
-[X] Try not to arouse suspicion, and to gather some amounts of intel on his location. As soon as you get RGS, you'll be attacking merchants in force, ideally taking Skidmark down, so now is not the time to arouse suspicion  
-[X] If he tries to force you to do drugs, resist. If he's serious about this, use sacrificial healing and hungry blood combos to burn down drugs in your system as fast as possible  
-[X] If he finds out about you being parahuman somehow, attack. Blood, plus strength. Try to force melee engagement.  
-[X] It might be time to change apartments. Think about how you could go about doing so. Maybe Danny Hebert could help you there?  
[X] Conclude uncompleted actions from last vote

* * *

A bus roars into the distance, It's a cold, wet evening, the sun went down about an hour ago and and the streets around the abandoned apartment where the chief of the merchants make his home are beginning to live up to the stories told in hushed whispers around winslow high. you trudge through the dimly lit streets while reminiscing about the the last week and a half. I turns out that taylor is a much better beginner fighter than you were. the instructior actually had words of praise for her situational awareness and form. She's cheating you understand, you're hardly innocent of that little fact yourself. At the moment her power just makes it far easier for her to manage that kind of physical thing. You're kinda jealous, at the thinker ability it comes with. your own thinker power's evaluation of her ability has risen by another five hundred points based on what she told you after the class.

You take the corner to Baker St the original home of the merchants and the location where Dear ol' Dad claimed a dillapidated apartment block to serve as his own personal fiefdom. to have what's pretty much a whole apartment to yourself in one of the upper floors, a bunch of your dad's minions live on the lower floors as erstwhile security and your dad occupies the entire top floor when he's home. More than half the time he's down at Squealers workshop closer to the boat graveyard, she's got an old RV which she lives out of, parking it in various warehouses and using it as a mobile tinker base which can move and fight. As you approach you notice Bill and Ben (the flowerpot men) a pair of the most unimaginitive and neckless of your dads goons, only really good for guarding and legbreaking but not exactly the brains of any outfit. the pair of them are broad across the shoulders like some kind of mutant linebacker with gorilla like arms which almost seem to drag across the ground. You have it on fairly good authority that they're paid well for their services and not in product either.

"Blake, you old man wants to see you." One of the gorillas grunts at you, not brooking any discussion. the other loops behind you and plucks your bag off your shoulder in a single beaty palm. You could beat them, probably quite easily these are men that like to grapple and you have bullshit superpowers. But if you do that then the cat's out of the bag and you've pretty much outed taylor at the same time.

Best not.

The Gorilla leads you over to the elevator and follows you in, he mashes the number for the top floor with a certain lack of delicacy endemic to your fathers men and stands silently in the corner as the elivator silently rises to the top floor.

"There you are you fukkin little cunt. The fukkin prodigal muthafukkin dipshit returns." Your father nearly screams at you from the far side of the room.

"Hey dad, 'sup. The lads say you wanna talk about something."

"The lads. heh." a wicked grin spreads across his dark skin. "You hear that Bill. You're a muthafukkin lad now." Dad staggers across the floor, he looks mostly sober, you've long lost the ability to really tell Skidmarks has never been the most consistent of people at the best of times and he likes to play up the druggie aspect to throw people off even when he's almost sober. He'd get blitzed afterwards though, every single muthfuckkin time.

"Siddown boy." It wasn't a question so you take a seat at the end of the long couch facing the flatscreen.

"Boy you know what I see when I look at you?" you feel a force press you back into the couch, most of the furniture in here is bolted to the floor for whenever your father decides to get up to shenanigans. you can still move easily enough but getting up would be an effort and a half.

"Dunno dad." You reply.

"I See a muthafukkin failure, a little pussy bitch who lets himself get beaten up by a girl. you said you were learnin' to fight and look at where it gets you. Getting you face smashed in by an punk bitch." Dad's storming backwards and forwards in front of you. "I did not raise you to be like this you little shit, no son of mine is going to let bitch and her candy ass friends to beat on his ass without payback. I got rep in this town can't let some pissant pussy cunt like you piss all over it like a, like a, like a... Fuck Fukkin' Fuck." He storms over to the dining table, laden with drugs and cash as it is and grabs a gun, a colossal overcompensation special.

"So here's what you're goin' to do ya little shit. you're gonna take this piece here" he presses the cold unbalanced steel into your hand. "An you're gonna find where this little punk ass bitch lives and you're gonna make my displeasure known. Gotit?" You feel the pressure increase, forcing you into the soft fluff of the couch and making escape even harder if you don't feel like using your powers.

"But dad. I won the fight." You say cheerfully. "Fucked those bitches right up, they'll be feeling it for the rest of the year."

"The fuck you say boy? Cause that isn't the story I heard. I heard that you got the livin' shit beat out of you, all messed up as fuck then they dragged you to the fukkin principles office for some shit. What I heard was your blood, the blood of MY BOY was all over the fukkin walls of that Shithouse school and the bitches got away without a scratch."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe that was part of the plan." You say with a cunning smile.

"Part of the muthafukkin plan. Part Of The Muthafukkin Plan. You hearin this lads, Hes says that gettin' the shit beaten out of him is part of the muthafukkin plan. What Plan Muthafukka?"

"Getting into Arcadia, you know bit of blackmail here, photos there, ominous nazis in the distance. Bam done."

"Tha Fuck?"

"You know blackmail, find something someone doesn't want you to know get some good evidence, get it on tape and threaten to tell Stormfront that a school let a black girl beat up a white girl for a year and a half."

"Blackmail… You threatened them with muthafukkin Stormfront?" Dad seems at least somewhat shocked.

"On tape Old Man." You extract your phone from its pocket and begin scrolling through the various recordings.

"The fuck the world's coming to? Fukkin Fuckkin cunt bitch pussy bullshit." You hear him mutter to himself.

"Dad listen up." you manage to find the correct bit of the recording.

* * *

recording said: GM Note, this is pulled from chapter 104, SB has this neat little quote function which formats it real neat like.

"Thats exactly what you're saying fuckface." You snap "That one little white girl with no criminal connections, or people on the outside willing to fuck you up isn't worth taking care of. That three bitches who are popular get to have the run of the school because they are the ones who have the power. Because the lot of you fucks are so fucking useless that you can't put the miniscule effort necessary into disciplining students who don't have anyone to back them up either let alone the Nazis or the Chinks." You give them all the hairy eyeball.

"Mr Bart, that's not what we're saying." Blackwell responds.

"Bitchtits that's exactly what it is you're saying. That you're too incompetent to give detentions to someone who doesn't have friends in low places let alone those who do.

As much as I'd like to drag this shit out I'm just gonna tell you that this is going to go one of two ways.

One, you give us what we want and you jump through the hoops we want you to then, if you're lucky, you get to keep your jobs and you get to go on living your shitty incompetent little lives.

Two. You don't and Me and Tay press charges. That isn't the end you know cause this is Brockton Bay bitches, this town has a bad case of the nazis and the law only lasts as much as the man made of knives says it does. When Kaiser opens up his newspaper in a week or two to find on the headlines that a race traitor has allowed a "Nigga Bitch" to bully a pure Honest White Girl, a daughter of the true pillar of the community. A pillar of the community who incidentally is in charge of hiring the best group of True Blue American Henchmen in the city out for various jobs. That the race traitor then after allowing the white girl to get the Gesellschaft Special proceeds to do nothing. Just sit there on her pretty blond arse while The Nigga Bitch goes back to work.

The fact that it took a little shrimpy Untermenschen like yours truly to get you to do anything about this shit is just the icing on the cake. Innit?"

"Mr Bart, this is not the wild west.."

"Blackwood, not two miles away there is a man who can turn into a living mass of knives, another man who could pull the very ability to walk from your mind and a woman who could level skyscrapers if she sneezed at the wrong time. If we take this to court what you have done will have deeply offended the core values of them and their friends. They will throw you a Nazi Party faster than you can say Springtime for Muthafuckin Hitler. And I'll tell you right now theres no party Like a muthafucking Nazi Party."

There's a stunned silence in the room.

"No party like a Nazi Party." Taylor giggles.

"A Muthafuckin Nazi Party, It's a proper and accurate adjective in this case." You mutter to Taylor who collapses into giggles.

"I see." Blackwood draws the word out, visibly shaken at the propect of a visit from hookwolf.

"Just what would you two like to see happen, here, at this table, that would have you walk away satisfied?"

"Transfer me to Arcadia High." Taylor said

There were a few looks of surprise.

"I expected you to suggest expulsion," the principal answered, "Most would."

"Fuck no," She said, pressing her fingers to her temple "No, no expulsion. Because that just means they can apply to the next-closest school, Arcadia, and because they aren't enrolled in school, it would mean accelerated entry past the waiting list. That's just rewarding them."

"Rewarding," The principal spoke. I think she was insulted. Good.

"I'd certainly want to be there than here. They've got good shit there, reputation, a budget, cleaners. I bet they'd even have security cameras or some shit, won't find any of dads people on that campus." you say

"That's all you would want?" another teacher asked.

She shook her head. "No. If it were up to me, I'd want those three to have in-school suspension for the remaining two months of the semester. No privileges either. They wouldn't be allowed dances, access to school events, computers, or a spot on teams or clubs."

"Sophia's one of our best runners for the track team."

"I really, really don't care," She replied.

"Why in-school suspension?" The principal asked, "It would mean someone would have to keep a constant eye on them."

"Suspension's a vacation," She retorted, "and it just means they could take a trip over to Arcadia and get revenge on me there. No. I'd rather they got no punishment at all than see them get suspended or expelled."

"That's an option." The lawyer joked.

"Fuck you Alan."

"We don't have the staff to manage somthing like that, we're understaffed as it is." the principal protests.

"Well your shitty personnel management got you into this situation to begin with bitch. You're just going to suck it up and make it happen otherwise its time for the Gutentag Hop Clop." You respond.

"Just so everyone's on the same page. Taylor has just made an eminently reasonable offer based on the assumption that we don't have you all over a fuckbarrel. To satisfy me you will give both of us transfers to Arcadia, I expect to see the first paperwork by the end of next week. Furthermore, I don't want to see those bitches at school until we're gone, so a regular suspension until then, in school suspension for the rest of the semester and detention, lunchtime and after school until the end of the year. During this time I don't want to hear about them having any privileges at all and I will hear about it. If I so much as smell Sophia at an interschool track meet this scandal will hit the papers so fuckkin' fast your heads will spin. any questions?" you ask.

"Blake this is completely unreasonable. I'm sure we can come to a compromise which everyone can live with."

"Ooooooor you can live with doing what I tell you because you have failed so utterly in your duty as an educator that it took me three days of work, three, to gather enough evidence to have you begging for mercy. Consider yourself lucky that I haven't commanded you immortalize this whole thing with a brass statue extolling my infinite virtues bolted to the desk in reception." You get out of your char and put on your jacket.

"Right, I got shit to do now. look for the recording of this meeting in your inbox and fuck you all and the horse you rode in on. Heberts, we're done here, lets go."

* * *

"Sooo, waddya think?" You look from your phone to dad, the hardened gang leader is smirking uncontrollably. Yup definitely high.

"Guten tag hop clop. Snerrrrk. hahahah, Geez muthafukkin according to plan like a muthafukkin bitch." You feel the pressure on you lessen and almost ease up entirely when your father unstable chuckle becomes a full on belly laugh which in turn becomes a hacking cough.

"You okay there dad?" you ask.

"Just fukkin peachy. peachy. Hooo. Haven't laughed like that for years boy. They bought it?" he asks from his place on the ground.

"Yeah they bought it, Some of the evidence I have dad. You dont even know."

"Haaaa. Dumb fucks the lot of'em." he drags himself of the floor and the force pinning you to the couch completely disappears.

"Bill, call the boys, get 'em back here and have 'em pick up some hooch while they're at it."

You plaster a false smile across your face when Dad hugs you around the shoulder and proclaims a party. It's somewhat surreal a supervillain in an american city acting like a Lord from the middle ages, proclaiming a feast in the wake of his son's victory but you roll with it. and the party goes well, for a merchant party that is, hookers and blow all around.

Skiddy's men don't get back in time for the festivities seems they ended up with a flat tyre and a bad case of car spiders somewhere near Taylor's pace and are now cooling their heels in a cell downtown. Dad doesn't care, they weren't even proper goons yet anyway, protogoons if you will, trying to buy their way into dads good graces.

The party rages through the night, you give it your level best but you are flat out incapable of getting drunk anymore and anything harder simply gets fluhed out of your system so quickly that you get ittle more than a fuzzy head which passes in seconds. That said you do break quite a few records and end up using the excuse of guzzling an entire bottle of vodka to pass out and get some sleep. One of the few remaining biological things you really need to do, regenerating biology is such bullshit.

* * *

You slide onto the bench to eat lunch, Taylor is already there happily munching away on her sandwich.

"So how'd it go?" she asks, boring into you with a steely gaze.

"My dad is such a fucker." You mutter as you collapse face first onto the table.

"Yeah, I noticed." She mutters, you groan into the table.

"I got him to back off once I told him about the blackmail, he thought that it was the funniest thing in the world and 'Wholehartedly Supports My Decision to Stick It To The Man.' Thats a quote by the way. this was after he asked me to pop a cap in Sophia's arse with his doom cock." Taylor snorts at the mention of the doom cock.

"Dad's got this gun, like 500 caliber or some shit, I've seen him walk around for hour on end just going Doooom Cock, Dooooom Cock." You pantomime the appropriate movements causing Taylor to giggle. "Anyhow I play him the blackmail bit from last week, just with out the personal shit and he thinks its funny as fuck, declares a feast like an English king or some shit and I end up chugging a bottle of vodka to get an excuse to go to bed."

"Hmmm?"

"That was at about two or three by the way, still tired. Fuck, heard the protogoons had a bad case of spider car." You can hear Taylor smirk at the mention of her antics.

"They wern't the cleanest of people, I can't be held accountable when they give me so much to work with." She shrugs and you chuckle. "I got a name last night. Imago. you were right it's a good name."

"Course I'm right I'm the best there is." She punches you in the shoulder for that.

"Anyway, I made some emergency masks out of old tin cans and started figuring out a good colour scheme." She unzips her bag on the ground beside her and passes you a small pile of forms. "I've also got these, Blackwell had be grab them this morning."

Blackwell has come through with the Arcadia documentation and in front of you there's easily half an inch of crisp white forms detailing the necessary information and qualifications to get into Arcadia.

"Hrmm. There's a few things I don't think I'll be able to work with here." you mutter as you survey the forms. "I mean, I'm a solid C student now but that's a new thing, my average is still pretty shit."

"Blackwell knows and understands the impact that the sustained bullying campaign has had on our grades and will make the appropriate allowances." Taylor states in a perfectly neutral tone.

"So you told her to make it happen huh?" You say, leafing through the sheets.

"Yup. Told her where to stick her academic requirements." Taylor says proudly, passing you a pen.

"Lots of four letter words I hope." Taylor only gives a knowing smile while the two of you reintroduce yourselves to the dark world of paperwork.

* * *

Objectives completed.

Power get.

Regulate Genetic Expression:

Able to control which aspect of your genome is being actively expressed in which part of your body at a given time.

Alterations of expression take a long time to take effect under normal conditions.

Allow you to effectively take control of what your genes do and where they are doing it.

Comes with thinker ability to understand your entire active genome and what the implications of any edits you make to a high degree of accuracy.

* * *

total Bu = 0


	15. 303 Boats Bullshit and Barristers

[X] Preparations for the transfer  
[X] Manage the fallout from the party  
[X] Material design. Now that you have your coveted mutation power, it's time to put it to good use  
[X] Do some low level attacks on random goons (and their cars) in areas not associated with either Taylor or you, and chosen via a random number generator  
[X] Start planning on cleaning the wrecks from the harbor

* * *

You twitch your eye and the colors change, another minute of fiddling and the colors change yet again, and again and again. Man this is weird. you click yet again and manage to hit infrared, greyscale and ultraviolet at the same time and goddamn that looks weird. Someone prods you in the side and you turn to look at Taylor.

"Mornin' Tay."

"You get it?" she asks. You look at her as you switch your pupil from normal to cat's eye and back to normal again.

"Cool. Watcha dooin'?"

"I'm trying to thingy my eyes, so i can see thingys like thingy which we normally can't see."

"And?"

"Next time I go heroing I'm going to need like four of five eyes to experiment with. I mean there's not much to see in infrared or UV but it's useful yannow and having something for dedicated night vision is going to be so cool." She gives you the strangest look, almost like you had grown another eye, you hadn't, school was on but from the look Taylor was giving you you couldn't tell.

From her bag she pulls out a thick sheaf of paper and hands it to you before grappling her own and landing herself next to you against the tree.

"Heres the course stuff for Arcadia, parent teacher stuff's on page seven, texts on page three and we're lucky that they don't have any medical examinations unless you have a serious condition."

"Cool." you thumb through to the appropriate locations and mark down what you need to buy on your own heroing book. It's just a notebook like Taylors but at the moment it's filled in with details about your warform. Things like "four eyes", "dense fur" and size of a rhino/gorilla/Bear.

You look at the parent teacher section to find that interviews with parents are usually undertaken at the end of term if a student is judged to be underperforming. Hmmm, superpowers should be able to solve that problem without too much trouble, keeping on top of your marks mean's that they'll never have to talk with your dad.

Your treacherous power pops up and suggests that bringing Skidmark in to discuss your class performance with the faculty would be, in a word, Hilarious, also explosive, flammable and bonkers.

You also mark out the things you in particular will need, you'll be taking a stab at the highest difficulty streams in all of your classes, advanced this, advanced that so on and so forth. It'll be a challenge. The costs for the books you need aren't cheap but you've got a neat stash of cash you appropriated from your father months ago which is more than enough to take care of it.

"Did you end up figuring out who told your dad?" She asks.

"Not really, you know what the rumor mill's like and there's like a dozen merchant kids around the place. I know there's at least a few at Arcadia as well."

"Huh I thought they'd have caught them all."

"Yes and no. No dealers but rich kids like drugs almost as much as poor kids and they've got the money to back it up, they can just hide it better. Keeping up appearances an' all."

"You think your dad will remember details about the thing."

"Fuck no, Dad is well Dad. He got blitzed off his arse within an hour of the details, he's go remembering brain goons to help him catch up on things whenever he goes on a bender and they don't know the details."

"Remembering brain goons. really?"

"Yup, like seeing eye dogs but with an even smaller vocabulary and even less creativity. He could probably put the facts together if he tried but so could literally anyone else, but nobody else has the recordings. 'Cept that barnes guy of course but for him it's more a horsehead in the bed rather than something he can use against us. We don't need to worry about that kind of shit from him."

"Good. Dealing with the school is bad enough if I had to deal with Skidmark as well…" You cringe at her words.

"Yeeeah. It ain't fun but I can deal. As long as it looks like I'm doing well he shouldn't bother you or your dad much but to be on the safe side make a habit of keeping a fly out for goons."

"He won't let you get away."

"Prolly not, but when he comes looking for me you'll probably be the first person he looks for." Her mouths sets itself into a thin line.

"Sorry." you sigh, offering the girl half a chocolate bar you pull from you bag.

"Can't be helped." she grumbles, taking the food. "Thought you didn't need to eat anymore?"

"Nahh, one tweak of the tastebuds and everything tastes weird." You munch on the confection. " Good, but weird."

The two of you get to back to your erstwhile lair each with a massive pile of books, the trip to the bookstore was largely uneventful, Taylor had enough money from Danny and you had plenty of cash yourself, residual coke notwithstanding. in the far corner of the room lies the water heater you wrestled out the day before, it's a large metal cylinder with heavy steel sides about eighty gallons as the boilerplate informs you, you're pretty sure there's a bunch of Styrofoam insulation as well which will give it a bit of extra capacity.

"How's your costume?"

"The bodysuit's almost ready, just need to finish up the sleeves and attach the zipper. I'm still having trouble with the armor panels though, treating chitin is harder than it looks."

"I might have an idea for that actually." You rip off one of the pipes from the upward facing edge of the water heater and put your finger into the hole. A bone plug forms quickly, pressing itself into the joint and beginning to grow a bloodbag.

"Hmmm?"

"Well, RGE is a little more versatile than I thought it was." You pull your finger out of the plug and an umbilical forms from the back of your hand to the container. "Escalating strength makes my tissue, bones, tendons and shit have strength which is one hundred and ten percent of the stresses being applied, it also makes my muscles stronger the longer they contract. So i put some muscles into my bones so they constantly apply pressure, give it an hour or so and voila I can bounce rifle bullets off my skull." You see her eyes light up with comprehension.

"That is so broken." She grins.

"Fuck yeah it is."

"You can create indestructible bone."

"Indestructible's pushing it but it'll be immune to knives and bullets things like acid, heat or cold'll still fuck it up like normal though, kill the muscle underneath which will just make it normal bone again."

"Still broken."

"Yeah, still broken as fuck. So I could make you armour plates, indestructible, easily to replace and easy to use."

"I'd like that, yeah." A grin stretches across her face. "we could probably sell them to the PRT they'd pay a mint to have something like this."

"There's that and we could also use it to make a Lair, it's nearly the perfect building material, we could put it anywhere we like and we've got as much of the stuff as we could need." You say with a grin while Taylor resumes lounging on the repaired couch.

"We aren't calling it a lair."

"Yes we are."

"No we aren't."

"I'm building it so I get to name it." She sticks her tongue out at you in an act of childish defiance and you can't help but laugh.

"So how's it going? You don't look like you're making much progress." She asks.

"Ok, the bloodbag is about two and a half kilos now and it'll probably take me a couple of hours to fill up the canister. But i've had a few ideas for once I'm done. You know how you were talking about how the wreck in the harbour was stopping shipping."

"Yeah. Tenish years ago during the riots a ship was sunk out in the bay, the graveyard exists because the deep hulled ships in the bay couldn't get out back into open water. Why?"

"Well I'm pretty sure I could move the ship out into deeper waters without too much trouble. This stuff grows exponentially, if I had an afternoon I could probably reach a thousand tonnes or so, once I do that it should be a relatively simple process to just grab the boat and push it out into deeper water." You say with a shrug while Taylor's eyes bulge at you.

"What… How… Just explain that to me again Blake."

"Well, if i'm just working on creating blood bags I can double the volume in about half an hour, I've got almost twenty kilos of the stuff now. In two hours, give or take I'll have enough to fill the cylinder. if we can get the cylinder to the shore it'll take about eight hours or so to get to a thousand tonnes or so. Then I just push the ship out of the harbor. Don't need to breathe and in the water I don't have to worry nearly so much about the square cube law."

"Okey so let me get this straight, you want to turn into a kaiju, in the bay and push the ship out into deeper ocean." she sounds skeptical.

"Yeah…" you say enthusiastically. "Just imagine it, I push the boat out and proper ships can start using the harbour again, then I can uses the extra body mass to build us a lair. Boom, job done, good will from the city and a lair all in a single weekend. So whaddya think?"

"I think you're mad."

"Well yes. We already knew that." She rolls her eyes at you.

"You might be able to do it but what about the PRT, getting that big is bad news and the gangs will be looking for us if we do it." She says.

"Well we don't need to actually be on site properly. Well you don't and I can escape pretty much unnoticed without too much trouble, especially if I have that much mass to play with. I could go and set up at a good lair spot to grow a big enough blood bag and then you could have your bugs run an umbilical all the way to the shore where I could grow a aquatic body, after I'm done I can just reconnect the body to the umbilical and use the mass to properly fit out our Lair."

"For that we need a lair… we aren't calling it a lair. We need a place first and it needs to be somewhere that someone can't just walk into and have a go at all of our things. there are a lot of abandoned warehouses near the docks which aren't used anymore, I guess we could go underground but that's harder. Anything else?"

"We could make a floating lair, it's just as easy for me to make a structure on the bay as it is on land but there's no privacy and it's one step away from full on cackling bond villain. Or we could occupy one of the larger wrecks over at the graveyard, it's ages away from anything important though so it'll be hard to get there. I was actually thinking of contacting your dad and get the association to rent something on our behalf in exchange for clearing the bay."

"Thats... " She snaps at you. "That actually might work. Dad's been trying to get it removed for years but the city has never had enough money, but I don't want to involve him any more than we have to, keep him separate from all of this."

"That's fine, I still reckon he's going to find out eventually. This is nice and deniable and the association probably has connections to dozens of good sites around the docks."

The two of you talk for a bit more but it's mainly about the various things you need to know about Arcadia. Taylor is a much better academically than you are and directs helps you with various bits of classwork which you have coming up. Just blowing off the work in defiance of the school isn't really in you given the path you've placed yourself on.

The one thing you do do is alter your voice, a nice Morgan Freeman impersonation, and call up the dockers union. The chief executive, Fredrick Jeffries, is dubious, very dubious but has agreed to give you a place for the weekend on the condition that you prove your credentials when you get there, if you do manage to clear the bay he'll see about getting you a years rent in an old warehouse to be arranged. Tayor seems to be happy with the result, she knows the bossman, he's only the boss on paper, Danny does the majority of the hiring and dealing with members, the main purpose of the union, while the Boss Jeffries manages client relations and official dealings within the city, including doing things for those who need them done.

You head off to your job at the restaurant with the original canister full to the brim with a bloodbag, about eighty five gallons of bloodbag capable of producing almost two and a half pints of blood per second or about three and a half ounces of flesh, you finish creating a second cylinder of bone which you barely begin to fill before you have to leave. There'll be about five hundred gallons of blood between the two by the time the finish filling, enough to flash fabricate about twenty kilos, forty pounds of muscle. It's a good start but you need more space to go go much furthur.

* * *

Thursday 10th of march.

"Could Taylor Hebert and Blake Bart report to the Principals office." It's second period, math, the teacher is an old bispecticaled man wit ha stutter who's prone to going on long rants on the evils of taxation. It's something of an art form to get the geezer to waste the class ranting instead of assigning homework or making you work, today is no different a couple of the nazis had been egging him on with well aimed questions. you hadn't learnt anything so far today as the teacher gives you a nod and you collect your things and head out the door.

Halfway down the hall you meet Taylor, her own overfull bag over her shoulder as the pair of you trudge slowly towards the office.

"Any idea about what's going on?" She asks.

"Dunno, Hopefully it's to tell us that the paperwork's been expedited and we can get out of this shithole." Taylor snorts.

"Hey, I live in hope." You quip as the pair of you pull up in front of the school admin office.

"Sup? Blake and Taylor here to see the principal." The harried old woman manning the reception desk gives you a dry look you're pretty sure that the public service patented years ago.

"Take a seat and the principal will see you when she's ready." The woman intoned in a practiced monotone.

Taylor looks at you, raising a single eyebrow with tacit permission.

"Ahh, I thought she wanted to see us now. I mean, why would she send for us just then if she didn't want to see us just now. It's almost like some petty power play."

"Take a seat and the principal will see you when she's ready." The woman intoned again in the same practiced monotone.

"So she doesn't want to see us now? Kay." You bob your head in comprehension "Taylor let's get back to class." Taylor shrugs and swivels on her heel and you lurch after her down the hall, before you get halfway down the PA crackles to life.

"Could Taylor Hebert and Blake Bart report to the Principals office." the pair of you swivel on your heels and you give taylor a knowing smirk as you stride back towards the don't bother to slow down for the admin lady as you swagger past and straight towards the principals closed door, you can hear the droning of the office lady as she asks you to sit and wait again but she hasn't gotten up from her seat and is presumably not ready to deal with this shit.

The door swings open easily, it isn't locked and you stride in without a second thought. You don't belong here, they don't want you here and that's precisely the way you like it.

"Mr Bart, if you could wait outside." Blackwell doesn't even look up from her desk as you barge in.

"Uhhhh." You look at Taylor. "No?"

"No." she replies.

"I'll go with no. So principal whacha want? you're distracting us from our very important and well delivered educational experience, gotta be something more important than sitting out front of the office."

"If you could just wait outside I will see you in due time." She asserts with a steely gaze, you've sen a lot of steely gazes but without the twitchy drugged up murderousness of your father i just isnt the same.

"No. You asked for us, you will deal with us now. We both have better things to do than wait for your incompetent arse to finish playing power games to stroke your ego." Taylor interrupts with the teely murderousness you aren't used to seeing from her.

"Yeah, What she said." You finish lamely.

The severe woman before you grumbles as she shuffles the papers on her desk, the people sitting with their backs to you lean around to look at you. the first on the left is a large middle aged man tall, broad and with a stomach which needs no introduction, Alan Barnes, the woman in the middle however is face you have known for a long time though never met Sarah Pellham, AKA Photon Mom AKA Nutshot, she has an uncanny talent for hitting that particular spot on your father, you need to get her autograph for that alone. The third person is an older relatively slight man in a well worn business suit, spectacles sit on the end of his nose and he's long given up the battle with his thinning hair, opting to go bald rather than risk a combover, his mode of dress and the neat little briefcase sitting next to his chair scream lawyer.

"Hmmmm. Lawyers." You quip, while Taylor glances around, surveying the occupants.

"These people." She sneers "Have taken issue with the punishment the pair of you have proscribed to Ms Barnes and Hess, classroom one of three is empty for the next hour. Sort it out between the five of you." She gives everyone a look of such worn tiredness that you're pretty sure that she no longer gives a single solitary fuck anymore and your rudeness only makes the situation worse.

Regardless you and taylor shrug and leg it down the hall, the classroom as promised is empty, old desks pitted and defaced by years of inattentive students with an old blackboard and attendant whiteboard showing signs of their age. It's one of the better classrooms used by the upper stream classes but the lawyers following the two of you like lost puppies hesitate before entering, giving the furnishing more analysis than is really and taylor quickly snatch up the most comfortable seats in the room, while the two normal lawyers scrounge for acceptable seating while Lady Photon cheats with a shield chair.

"So what's with the three of you wanting to meet two underage students in an abandoned classroom for lawyer stuff?" You ask.

"It's not like we can sign anything. Underage you know." Taylor remarks.

"We do understand that but the terms requested by the pair of you against our clients and the method to which you have gone to achieve them are both too harsh for any fair and reasonable consideration and illegal respectively." The older man states as he places a pair of multi page reports on the desk he occupies and slides the m over to the pair of you.

"It has also come to our attention that you have a significant amount of criminal connections as well as a truly abysmal academic record, having commonly associated with known merchants as well as rumored drug possession and dealing within the school, as has been testified by several students."

"Ms Hebert has an academic performance almost as bad and is widely known to the school body as a liar and a cheat as testified by several students in good standing, there is no solid evidence that she was ever bullied by either of our clients save those recording which were illegally obtained and distributed in a clear case of slander. Any questions?" Taylor sets her jaw tight as she retrieves the report, opening it to the first page and beginning to skim it from top to bottom, you follow suit, remaining silent until you reach the end of the report.

The report posits that you:

Illegaly recorded their clients in several places.

That the 'arrangement' between you and the school is a clear case of intimidation and blackmail.

That the punishment levied by the school as a direct result of the blackmail is excessive in the extreme as well as based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence.

That the threat of a third party is irrelevant to the case as it stands.

That Blake Bart is a known criminal associate of the "Merchants" organised criminal enterprise as well of a student of almost nonexistent academic talent.

That taylor Hebert is a student of poor academic talent and character with testimony from several other students, ones you recognise as non-core members of the clique.

The wording of the document makes it clear that they will drop this path of enquiry should you rescind your threats against their clients.

"Huh, Interesting." you say as you put the report down, you spare a glance at Taylor, her eyes have gone a bit puffy around the edges but her jaw is set firmly and with a bit of effort you can hear a resonant humm from the ceiling space.

Surrender is not an acceptable outcome.

* * *

What do?

[] Surrender to their demands. Unadvised, Taylor looks like she's about to choke a bitch.  
[] And?, do not engage, force them to play their hand as it is.  
[] Attack parts of their argument. eg. Sophia & her guardian, your criminal history, Assertations on Taylors charachter, Follow the money. etc.


	16. 304 Slander Lies and Genealogy

You extract your phone, fiddle with it for a moment to start the recorder before placing it on the table.

"This is a real interestin' report aint it Tay." you give her a look and find the girl fuming.

"Yeah I suppose it is, you recording?" she asks coldly.

"Course I am. Record keeping purposes yanno." You carefully put the report down and begin taking photos of it with your phone.

"More record keeping Mr Bart?" Sarah Pellham asks as you flip through the report.

"But of course Lady Ballbuster, I mean you're lawyers. Can't trust a lawyer, they can walk through a corkscrew sideways." You look at Taylor as she suppresses an angry snigger and Pelham rolls her eyes. Ahhh, she know that name.

"Ha you know the name. Taylor she knows the name. Ha haaaa, this is brilliant." you take a moment to dig into you bag for your notebook.

"Sarah what, is he talking about?" Barnes asks. She goes to answer but you beat her too it.

"Believe it or not Nutshot here and my dad know each other fairly well and meet on a reasonably regular basis. I suppose you could call them business meetings but when it happens sparks fly like you wouldn't believe. Ain't that right?" You ask, Alans eyes are boggling and Taylor who you've already told this story has begun openly sniggering. Sarah is giving you a look of extreme disapproval and while the other lawyer is rolling his eyes in a very professional manner.

"So when they meet the first thing that happens is that she gives him a nice little lovetap with those beams of hers, sometimes she lovetaps him clear across the room. POW, right in the jewels, you can almost set your watch by it." You make the appropriate gesture. "Anyways could I get an autograph? Make it out to Geoffry Bart, many happy landings." You hold out the notebook and a pen with a feral grin, she takes them with the beginnings of a smile. small enough that you can barely tell that it's there.

"You do know that there are services out there which can help remove you from an unfit household." she tells you while scribbling on the page.

"I know. If I could I would, But I can't so I won't." You shrug, attempts to remove you from your father would be about as effective as removing her kids from her, except significantly more dangerous for all involved. she hands you back the notepad and you take it to find the desired note with a crude stick figure drawing depicting a flying person beaming another stick figure in the junk. Heh, you gotta find a way to stick this somewhere the less clever of your fathers boys will find it.

"Why are you all here anyway?" Taylor asks. "We're underage so you can't get us to sign anything and if you were going to charge us then well…" she looks at you and you shrug. "You'd have brought the cops. Which means that this is, illegal. I mean, who sends a pack of lawyers after a bunch of highschoolers."

"We were anticipating dealing with someone far more reasonable." The stuffy lawyer says.

"Ahhh, you're here for Blackwell." You finish taking photos of the document. "That makes a bit more sense." Taylor grunts in the affirmative. "But Blackwell is fresh out of fucks to give, I mean if this get's out, if we press charges against your clients, her career is finished and the Nazis won't be happy with what she's been doing, not one bit, nor your clients for that matter."

"Have the three of you even taken the time to review the evidence I mean, these things you say in the report are nice and all, but they're pretty flimsy however you want to look at it. Asking high schoolers to say bad things about someone on the bottom of the totem pole and analyzing their marks when most of their assignments were sabotaged is, well, kinda low. I know you're lawyers but the evidence is more than enough for a trial by media and little Emma can't afford that can she, getting your name up in lights as a treacherous witch ain't real conducive to a modelling career." You finish.

"And Madison can't really try her little miss innocent anymore can she?" Taylor remarks.

"True dat. it requires a nice clean record not being on the receiving end of an assault charge. That gotta suck."

The lawyers bristle, huddling to discuss the situation between them while you and taylor continue to make suggestive comments about what a "shame" it would be if those "Poor innocent Students" were the subject of "Baseless accusations Without Actionable Evidence" You eventually migrate to discussing fire protection in libraries just to keep the theme up.

The lawyers leave their impromptu huddle. "It is our opinion that your case against both miss Hess and miss Barnes are not substantial enough to warrant the damage which your ultimatum would inflict against both their academic careers and their mental well being. A simple case of schoolyard assault while damaging is grounds for a four week suspension and no more." Pelham states in a clear controlled tone.

"Hmmm, I don't think she's heard the evidence Blake." Taylor says. "Have you heard all of the evidence because, this isn't a simple case of assault?"

"I have heard the bathroom recording and the photographic evidence recorded illegally by Mr Blake. Most of it inadmissible, it hasn't convinced me of the merit of your position."

"The first email. you've seen the first email. Ha. You're in for a treat little missy." You cackle.

"Did you know that there was a third recording and that Taylor was keeping a diary? Really, Barnes, did you not show her that?" You ask, feral grin spreading across your face.

"I deemed it unimportant to the case, given Taylor's habits as a habitual liar as established in a report the evidence of her diary has no more weight than the paper it is written on." He mumbles angrily, both you and Taylor can't help but smirk as Sarah's head swivels around to look at the big man.

"Hiding pertinent details from you lawyer. A winning strategy." Taylor mocks.

"Too true." You say fiddling with you phone, "Ess dot Pelham, and attach, and send." You mutter posting off the necessary details, a moment passes before you hear Sarah's phone chime.

"Alan, when I open that email will I agree with your assessment?" She asks with ice in her voice he cringes and stutters a bit under her withering gaze.

All you and Taylor can do is snigger. When you went into this it seemed they were up to something, lawyers with sneaky ways, but now you could see that Taylor was feeling more confident, openly sniggering at Barnes' misfortune.

"Okay. We done her Tay?" You ask.

"Yeah I think I am." she replies standing up and gathering her things, the document going into he bag.

"Cool. Kay, you three listen closely. This report." You hold it up. "Is bullshit. Most of it's false and the bits which aren't don't mean anything. On the other hand if we choose to press charges, and we might if you keep up bullshit like this, all of your clients and the school will be so far up shit creek that the British Exploring Society wouldn't be able to find them with a six month expedition and two dozen sherpas, and it wouldn't be the law that they really had to worry about so even if you win you're still irrevocably fucked. Right now we are giving you an easy way out, cheap, simple, painless and we could probably give it to you in writing if you get nervous about backstabs. Take it because right now both of us has better shit to do with our time and if you keep being a pain in the arse we might change our minds." you stand up straight to your impressive height of five foot four. "Any questions?"

"What about my daughter?" Barnes asks. "If we do this she'll lose everything. She was you friend Taylor can't you find it in your heart to forgive her."

"Yes, she was." Taylor says sadly before leaving the room silently.

"Maybe you could try good parenting, I heard it really helps a kid's wellbeing, not that I'd know of course, never had a good parent and all. Then again look at how well I turned out." You boast as the other lawyers collect their things and Barnes gives you the furious glare of a man who thought he had everything.

"What do you care? Why are you even here? Why all this?" He almost shouts.

"It's a fucked up world full of fucked up people Barnes, and some just seem to get shat on from such a height that you'd swear that god himself had taken an interest in them. My mum died from an OD years ago, I think I was ten, can't really remember, the drugs yannow, and Dad is such an asshole you wouldn't believe. Panacea saved me, just straight up !Boom! you little runt you are now cured. Fuck. I'd be dead if it wasn't for her. So I want to make something of myself, Be a contender, Half as good as she is and there's this girl at school who looks like she needs saving so here we are, right here, right now and it was so easy just so simple. The thing which started this, you know what set your perfect little bitch off? A nail in her locker lock. Fuck man, just a little thing like that could be literally anyone and she jumps down the throat of her favourite victim like fucking clockwork, perfect for the cameras. You fucked up, she fucked up, it's all so fucked up. Anyhow, I'm off to Arcadia on Monday, Tay as well, my reward for doing good you could say and you have to deal with a daughter which could really do with some saving. They used to be friends man, that shit's fucked up." You shrug at him as he lets his head collapse into his palms.

"Amy saved you." Sarah asks before she leaves.

"Fifteenth birthday." You draw your thumb across your gut with the appropriate noise. "Fixed me up, flushed my system, even fixed my asthma. Yeah, I owe her a solid." She nods at your tale and leaves quietly with the other lawyer.

You meet up with Taylor down the hall, she looks a bit ragged, the meeting took it out of her.

"I can't take it... I… I've got my costume in the bag. Let's go rustle some Nazis" She says, still shaking a bit.

"Sounds like a plan." You pull up next to her as her long legs quickly carry her out the front door of the school. "Got any ideas which ones?"


End file.
